Crimes of Passion
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, past HPGW and DMAG. Draco lost a love he thought would last forever when Harry committed a terrible crime and left the wizarding world. Now Harry has come back, and Draco is determined to find out why. COMPLETE.
1. As It Was

**Title: **Crimes of Passion

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco (past and present), past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria

**Rating: **R

**Warnings:** Violence, sex, heavy angst, profanity, torture. Epilogue-compliant.

**Summary: **Draco was foolish enough to believe that his love affair with Harry Potter would last forever once it began. Then Harry committed a stupid, thoughtless crime that nearly resulted in two murders and left the wizarding world. Draco never knew why. Now Harry is back, but not contacting Draco—and Draco is determined to find out all the reasons.

**Author's Notes: **This will be an irregularly-updated fic of, probably, five or six parts. It gets pretty angsty in places; fair warning.

**Crimes of Passion**

**Part One: As It Was**

"Did you hear the news, Father?"

Draco didn't bother glancing up from the _Prophet _that he was reading. It was yesterday's, but that didn't matter. He hadn't come home until late yesterday evening, as usual, and being a day late with the news rarely troubled him anymore. He heard most of the rumors that mattered to his particular group at the meetings, after all.

And Scorpius was always willing to update him with the latest gossip.

"What news?" he asked absently, picking up a scone covered with butter and biting into it. He had to sigh as the thick, warm taste gathered in his mouth. He had never appreciated good food when he was younger, often bolting it because he wanted to get to Quidditch practice or a game of chess with his friends or a political meeting—all of them things that he thought more important than meals. Now he had pity for his child-self. How many wonderful meals had he missed, how many tastes had it taken him years to learn to savor, because of his impatience?

"Harry Potter's returned," Scorpius said with a certain relish. There was a nasty chuckle in the back of his voice. "After four years of exile. Imagine! The paper is having a field day with it already."

Draco discovered then that food could still taste ashy and unimportant when you were forty-seven years old. He lowered his scone and his paper both and stared at his son, who smiled back at him, fingers tapping on the edge of his plate as he waited for his father's reaction.

"What?" Draco whispered.

"I _thought _that would get your attention," Scorpius said with satisfaction. "Yes, here's the article." He held out the paper from that day, and Draco actually dropped his old one in the butter in his haste to reach it. Scorpius chuckled again and called for a house-elf to clean it up while Draco scanned the article Scorpius had been talking about.

It would have been impossible to miss, although Draco was grateful that Scorpius had prepared him so that he didn't simply pick up this _Prophet _tomorrow and stumble on it. On the front page was a headline that screamed _**SAVIOR RETURNS!**_ The smaller one beneath it said, in letters that looked as if they would like to grow bigger and overtake the headline, _Mysterious Cause of Exile Still Unknown!_

Draco snorted to himself. He knew exactly why Potter had left the wizarding world. He had done something stupid and terrible when he came across two teenagers trying to sneak into the Ministry. He had all but tortured them, not using the Unforgivables but using Dark curses that were close to them. They would have died if someone hadn't found them and taken them to St. Mungo's no more than an hour later.

He stared at the headline and read a few words of the article until it came to him what he had been consciously avoiding. He couldn't do that, not with his son watching him. He took a deep breath and looked at the photograph that the _Prophet _had chosen to illustrate the article, half-hoping it would be an older one he knew, so that he could prepare himself.

It wasn't. It was a new one, and showed Potter ducking his face and whirling away, tucking an arm around his face as though that would lessen the guilt he should rightfully be suffering from. Draco had enough time to see the strands of silver that flickered among the dark curls now and the lines etched into his face.

Lines of suffering, Draco thought automatically. He had once known Potter well enough to recognize them as distinct from lines of mere age or laughter.

He flinched when that thought came to him. He had never really known Potter at all, he reminded himself sternly, not when he hadn't realized he was living and lying in bed with someone capable of cold-blooded torture. He had been fooled, just like everyone else. He had thought Potter was heroic, sacrificing, and more compassionate and courageous than Draco had believed he was in Hogwarts, given the way that _he _had been the one to approach Draco about fancying him after their divorces.

That "little fancy" had grown into a five-year love affair. The love affair Draco had once thought would last for decades.

"Are you all right, Father?"

Scorpius's voice was casual, but when Draco glanced up, it was to find his son's burning eyes fixed on him. Draco could understand why. He hadn't raised Scorpius in the same way that his father had raised him, and perhaps because of that, Scorpius was more like Lucius than Draco had ever been. He understood weakness and forgave it more readily in strangers than in his own family members.

"Yes, of course," Draco said, and folded the paper up and laid it next to his plate so that he could still see the photograph. Potter ducked away, and Draco shook his head. _If he feels that guilty, why did he come back? Why did the Ministry allow him back, if his leaving was really a sentence of exile for his crime? _Even Potter's trial and punishment had been shrouded n secrecy, never mind his motivation. "Surprised, that's all. I never thought I would see him again."

"Well, technically you haven't," Scorpius pointed out. "You don't have to see him ever again. It's not as though he would come back to the Manor."

"No," Draco said. "I put up wards against his entrance the moment he left for the Muggle world."

Scorpius smiled at him and went back to eating his breakfast. Draco glanced at the picture again. What he had told Scorpius wasn't true, but then again, Scorpius had never been that good at spotting lies. He had grown up in a world largely freed from the necessity of them once his parents divorced.

Ten years ago, that had been, a year before Potter came to him and confessed that he fancied Draco. Draco and Astoria had gone from King's Cross, where they had seen Scorpius board the train, and signed the papers.

Draco wondered what _her _reaction to the news would be. She and he had never really spoken again after they divorced; Draco had had the impression that she wouldn't want to be bothered with his small and petty problems. Now and then she visited Scorpius or sent him a gift, but Scorpius spent as much time at his own small house as he did at the Manor now, so his parents didn't have to cross paths.

_It seems that the world has arranged things so that I don't have to meet either of my old lovers again, _Draco thought, and then turned his mind forcefully away from that thought. It wasn't as though losing Potter had meant the same thing that losing Astoria did. He and Potter had been lovers, yes, in love, yes, but in the end, he hadn't known who Potter was, and he hadn't understood him.

It was best that exile separated them.

For a moment, the Potter in the photograph seemed to turn and look straight at him. Draco rolled his eyes at the abounding power of his own imagination and folded the paper over so that he could read the story on the second page.

* * *

"We've been warned that the Wizengamot might be considering a new law to restrict the sale of love potions," said Amanda Galloway, leaning forwards to rap her long, pointed nails on the table.

Draco concealed a groan as he wrote in the words on the list of notes he was responsible for keeping. "What's next?" he muttered. "A restriction on the sale of potions to grow wings?"

"You can't deny that there are experiments that have come close to being true love potions in the last year or so," said Mark Ringer at once. He sat on Draco's left and was leaning in aggressively as always, his jaw jutting out as though he would use it to smash through Draco's objections, or possibly his mere presence. "And there's no guarantee that the Wizengamot will interpret this new law as widely as it did the last one, to cover other potions."

That caused a string of unhappy murmurs from around the table. Draco smiled. He had made sure, over the years, that there was no more malicious edge to his smile, because that might give away his intentions. "Very well, Ringer. Then I place you in charge of investigating the genesis of the new law, and, if need be, finding a solicitor and barrister who can work for us in coming up with a legal objection against it."

Ringer stared at him in wounded betrayal. Draco simply kept up his smile, nodding slightly as he caught Galloway's approving eye. If someone was going to protest, get in the way, and make trouble, then they ought to be prepared to be of use. People like Ringer never were, of course. They wanted to have the pleasure of complaining and none of the work of finding a solution.

As the meeting of the United Potions Masters of Great Britain began to break up, Galloway stepped up beside Draco and lowered her voice. "I have something to talk to you about."

Draco nodded and pretended to be busy with his notes while the others left. He didn't normally keep a lot of secrets from them, but political caution was ingrained in him by now. They hadn't made as many strides as they could have in the last few years, perhaps, especially in persuading the public that certain "dangerous" potions either didn't exist or weren't Dark, but they hadn't lost ground, either, and they had achieved some respectable victories. It sounded as though what Galloway wanted to talk to him about might feed into another of those.

But when Galloway moved towards him, the expression on her face didn't indicate any political concern. It was rather…personal, in fact. Draco straightened his back and regarded her in silence. He had generally resisted any advances that wizards or witches made in the last four years. He needed no one's pity. Yes, he had divorced Astoria and lost Potter, but he was far from the first wizard to go through such trials.

They didn't often happen to Malfoys, granted. But Draco considered himself a successful Malfoy nonetheless, since he had safely raised one child to adulthood and hadn't died in the Dark Lord's war. True, he would feel safer when Scorpius chose his own partner and had his own child, something that showed no signs of happening yet.

"Have you heard about those who have seen Potter?" Galloway was even more self-conscious than Draco, checking around the room before she spoke.

Draco arched his eyebrows. "Near the Ministry, wasn't it? So they would have to be Aurors. I would imagine they'd want to question him on why he broke exile." He noted approvingly that his voice didn't tremble and his palms weren't sweating.

"I didn't think you knew," Galloway said, twining her fingers together. Her face was long and narrow, not naturally made for expressions of sympathy, but at the moment, she was trying. "They—your neighbors, Malfoy. They saw him near the Manor."

Draco narrowed his eyes, but said aloud only, "How interesting."

Inside his head, a cacophony had begun to bay and yelp, but he quieted it with a thought. It was important that he not reveal his weakness to someone who might take advantage of it. Galloway was as much a friend as Draco thought he had in his group—the rest were political allies and comrades in the cause of getting others to see that not all Potions decreed as such by the Ministry were dangerous and Dark, as well as fighting for more freedom and congenial conditions under which to work and brew—but she might seize an advantage over him. The only way to keep that from happening was to give her no chance to find one.

So he smiled and shook his head. "He must still think of the bond we shared with fondness," he said.

"You were one of the last people to defend him, I heard." Galloway leaned forwards, eyes piercing as she looked at him. "One of the last to believe that he was innocent."

Draco gave a choppy nod, but he wagered that it looked fairly normal to someone who, like Galloway, didn't have reason to suspect why it should be otherwise. "Yes. I was naturally reluctant to believe that someone I loved and trusted had done such a thing. I let my defense go when I learned the truth, of course."

Never mind that it had taken a private confession from Potter, a confession that Draco still didn't like to think on even now. Galloway didn't need to know that.

"Could he have sought you out for that reason?" Galloway frowned. "Because he believes that you might still defend him, and he needs powerful friends to return to the wizarding world?"

The moment she said it, Draco relaxed. He had been tense with the unanticipated appearance, tense with the thought of what Potter might ask him to do, but now it made sense. "Of course," he said. "But he is mistaken if he thinks to find a friend in me."

Galloway gave him a smile. "I notice that you didn't deny your power, though you might have, a few years ago."

Draco smiled back, and they began to talk about whether Draco should go over Ringer's head and do the legwork on researching the new law himself, which left the conversation they _had _been having in the dust entirely. Draco was grateful for it. He didn't want to think about what he might have given away.

Despite what he had managed to convey, Galloway's _information _was new to him. He had to get to a quiet place and think it through before he could decide how he would react.

When he did have that quiet place, his own drawing room in the Manor—a place that Scorpius never came, and neither had Astoria when they were married—he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He knew that he would have to prepare for Potter contacting him if he wanted to use Draco's good name, socially earned since the war, as a defense.

What would he do? What would he say?

It didn't take him long to decide, and didn't cost him the kind of painful fuming or hesitating that it would have even ten years ago. He was grown, now. He wasn't a helpless child whose offer of friendship had just been turned down. The worst that would happen was Potter contacting him and Draco, with a cool smile, reminding Potter that he had burned his bridges with Draco four years ago.

"Father?"

Scorpius stood in the doorway of the drawing room, staring at him intently. Draco stared back at him, startled and displeased. While Scorpius technically hadn't violated the sanctity of the room by crossing into it, he had never even opened the door without knocking before. Draco wondered what had changed.

"Son." His voice was cold despite himself, and Scorpius seemed to transform into a child again, moving backwards with a little fidget and a tiny bow of his head.

"Um, sorry," he said. "But I wondered what you were going to do if Potter showed up at your door." And his eyes were oddly bright again, even as he turned his head to the side and looked at Draco from beneath his hair, biting his lip.

Draco sighed. Perhaps Scorpius thought he should never have been involved with Potter in the first place, that it would have been simpler for everyone if he had remained single after Astoria. Draco could see the merit to that view, considering the way things had worked out.

But another thing he no longer spent time on now that he was an adult involved the endless regretting of his mistakes and chewing over of the consequences as if they were all his fault. Yes, he wished he hadn't accepted Potter into his home and his heart, if it came to that. But it _didn't matter._ His emotions were much less important than his actions.

If nothing else, gaining standing again in the Ministry and wizarding society had taught him that bit.

"I'll turn him away," Draco said, rising to his feet. "And teach him that he needn't think he can look for support from _me_, when he's the one who caused the trouble and then wouldn't tell me why." That was the last spasm of old anger and fear, the worst. Potter had tried to excuse himself with feeble "reasons" for why he had committed his crime, sure, but nothing that made sense for the man Draco had known, which forced him to conclude that all their togetherness had been a lie.

"Oh. Good." Scorpius's smile was brilliant this time. "I'll bet you show him that _you're _not soft when he shows up!"

* * *

But Draco never got the chance, because Potter didn't show up.

Oh, there were still rumors of him appearing around the Manor; Draco's nearest wizarding neighbors said that he was so often in Wiltshire, standing on a hill at a distance or sneaking past their wards and guardian magical creatures, that he never seemed to leave it. And the papers were rehashing the story of their old love affair, and the way that Draco had defended Potter at first, before abruptly backing off.

That second, at least, Draco had anticipated. He always had the choice not to read the papers, and the wards around the Manor kept away Howlers from people who weren't already friends or related to him by blood. Skeeter was the only reporter who might have been bold enough to try and corner him in his brief journeys between his meetings or the shops in Diagon Alley and the Manor, and she and Draco had had an altercation a few years ago that left her with an excellent understanding of what would happen if she tried. So Draco could ignore that part of it if he wanted.

But why Potter would come to his country and then not to his house…

It puzzled Draco, and it bothered him, but he didn't let it take over his life the way he might have a few years ago. He read, and he studied, and he ate the delicious meals that the house-elves prepared for him, and he slept at night with a clear conscience. He might wonder why Potter was there, yes, but he had nothing to fear from his mere presence.

Scorpius didn't seem to think so. Every time Draco looked up, his son's critical eyes were on him. But Draco was also used to that, and able to shrug it off. Scorpius always _had _been more like Lucius, sure that he would have done things differently and better in Draco's place. Draco found it no trouble to accept the implied comparison and go on.

Scorpius was young; things like honor and social reputation mattered more to him. Draco was actually quite relieved to be out of that phase of his life.

He did think, however, that he was no better at living with uncertainty than he had ever been. Potter had shown up near his house. That must mean he had come for some important reason. Draco wished that he would show up and get it over with.

When Potter didn't, Draco thought he had only one choice, but he wasn't sure it would work. So he acted without Scorpius knowing about it. That way, at least, he wouldn't have to stand before the judging eyes of his son.

His own judgments still hurt less.

* * *

The old spell that they had invented, the one that would track the other's wand core, still worked. And while Draco knew, intellectually, that there could be other wizards out there who had phoenix feathers in their wand cores similar to the one that Potter possessed, he still believed that the way the wand tensed and rang in his hand indicated there was only one person he could be growing close to.

He came around the base of one of the small hills that guarded the Manor from a casual approach, and found Potter standing there, staring towards the fence that marked the boundaries of the gardens. His eyes were bright and sick with longing, and his wand was in his hand, but pointing at the ground.

Draco waited, to see if this was a trap and Potter would react to his appearance in a moment. But nothing happened. Potter just kept standing there, sick and weak, until Draco couldn't stand it any longer and cleared his throat loudly.

Potter leaped in the air and whirled around. He landed panting like a startled rabbit, staring directly at Draco.

Draco shuddered as the recognition went through him the way fear had apparently gone through Potter. Yes, this was the man he had seen in the photograph in the _Prophet_, with some strangeness about his face. But it was also still the man he had fallen in love with, if a wild-eyed, shadowy version of him. Potter had beard stubble growing all over his chin, which he would never have had in the old days since Draco hated it, but that jaw remained the same.

His eyes had acquired new terrors, but their color was still the same, and Draco was half-sure he saw a familiar flicker of desire in them, too.

"Draco," Potter whispered, his eyes flicking down as if he wanted to check that he still stood on the solid earth instead of floating in space. "Why did you—you must have known that you would be better off avoiding me."

Draco didn't know which it was, Potter's use of his first name or his half-threat, but he abruptly lost his temper.

Flicking his wand, he Summoned Potter's wand. Potter let it go without expression, though he watched with those same wide, watery eyes as Draco caught it. Draco didn't put it away, because he had no intention of keeping it. He was going to have a short conversation with Potter, shame him into stating why he was here, and then do his best to throw him out of the wizarding world so that he would never have to see the idiot again.

"You thought that spying on me would make me feel sorry for you?" Draco shook his head, his mouth drawing down into a sneer. It had been a while since he had done that regularly, but he still knew how to do it, and felt an old, bitter pride at the thought. "You know nothing about me. I knew nothing about you. And that was the whole trouble," he added. He knew Potter must have been deliberately lying to him the whole time they had been lovers, though Draco still hadn't figured out how he had done that. Potter was such a poor liar that Draco should have known at once if he attempted to pull off something even half that ambitious.

"I wasn't spying on you," Potter said. His emphasis fell on odd words within the sentence, and he took a step nearer, reaching for his wand. He seemed surprised when Draco rapped him sharply across the knuckles with the hawthorn wand.

"I wasn't spying on you," Potter repeated, and glared at Draco as if he should just simply accept his word for it, as if everything else he had done wasn't clue enough that he shouldn't be trusted. Draco sneered again. The young part of himself, everything that Potter appealed to, was rising to the surface, and at the moment, he didn't see why he should stop it.

"You'll excuse me for wondering what you're doing here, then," he said, "when my house is the only wizarding dwelling in the county that you used to visit regularly."

Potter half-closed his eyes, and the expression of anguish on his face looked as if it were genuine. Draco nodded, a little impressed, but not about to actually _believe _in Potter or anything like that.

"If I told you," Potter muttered, "it would negate the whole point of lying to you in the first place."

Draco laughed without humor. "What are you lying about now? Other than not spying on me, that is. And I _know _what you did. I had no choice about knowing." Thick bitterness choked him and surprised him, a little. He hadn't known how much he still cared about the deception that Potter had tricked him with. He should have been able to let it go, but he couldn't, and the hatred for what Potter had done burned in the center of his chest.

"Right," Potter said. Draco opened his eyes-when had they closed?-quickly enough to surprise a nearly identical expression of bitterness on Potter's face.

Draco shook his head. "State your _real _purpose for being here, or I'll contact the Ministry and let them ask you."

"You could do that." Potter arched forwards, apparently trying to reach for his wand without seeming to reach for it, but Draco was wise to that trick and moved it back. Potter went still, eyeing him intently. "But the Ministry knows all about me already. They're the only ones who do."

Draco had to stare at that. Did Potter still believe that he was the big, strong Auror who could never make a mistake, who had perfectly carried off the facade of being a hero? He _had _to know that wasn't true, not after his exposure in all the papers. "My neighbors know you're here. My son does. The papers do. I do. How is that restricted to the Ministry?"

Potter's face twisted, and the ugliest laughter Draco had ever heard came out of his mouth. "If you only knew, Draco," he said, and Draco shivered as though an icicle had gone through him. "If I could tell you-"

Then he flushed and turned his head away, clearing his throat. Draco could hear him muttering, "God, Harry, you nearly gave the game away."

"What _game_?" Draco demanded. His blood was burning now, and even in the midst of his fury, he had to wonder whether what he had taken as adulthood in the last four years was really just the boredom of having no one around who could challenge him. "If someone's playing with me, I want to know about it."

Potter gave him a bleak look. "No, you don't. That's why I had to lie to you in the first place."

"As though I would rather not know my lover was a murderer and torturer," Draco retorted. "Oh, excuse me, _would-be _murderer, considering that someone rescued those children you tortured in time."

Potter opened his mouth as though to say something, then bowed his head and shrugged his shoulders wearily. "Right."

Draco studied him with narrowed eyes. Potter wasn't supposed to give up that easily. He was supposed to rage and fight on. But Draco reckoned that anyone could change in four years of exile from the real world, and perhaps that Potter he'd known had been a mask and a lie like all the rest.

Potter shivered and glanced once towards the Manor. "I don't think anything's going to happen tonight," he said, apparently to himself again. Draco cleared his throat loudly, but Potter ignored him. "There would be more signs if something was."

"You've found a victim outside the Manor's wards," Draco said, moving forwards and spreading his arms. "Me. I'm amazed that you don't strike now, while you have someone helpless in front of you and you're alone."

Potter stared at him as if he were speaking French. "You're not helpless."

Draco dropped the two wands he held. He was flushed with exhilaration and anger, knew he was being stupid, and didn't care. "Now I am. Come on, Potter, don't you _want _to torture me? Don't you _desire _it?"

Potter's eyes flashed brilliantly, and Draco had the impression of a wolf leaping out of the darkness at him as Potter grabbed his arm. For a moment, they were close again, and Draco felt sweat spring out all over his body at the sensation.

"I wish I could be with you," Potter whispered into his ear. "I love you."

And then he had snatched his holly wand and Apparated, all before Draco could even convince himself that he had really heard what he thought he heard, much less do anything about it.

With a wince at the creaking in his knees, Draco bent over to pick up his wand, all the while running Potter's wild words over in his mind. What kind of game was he playing? Why did he expect Draco to believe his lies even now? Why stay around the Manor when he hadn't even made an attempt to approach the wards?

Too many unanswered questions. Draco was tired of them.

Which was why he was going to find the answers. Four years ago, he hadn't done that.

If he had to lose his lover and the life they had built together, he was at least going to know _why_.


	2. In the Dark

Thank you for all the reviews!

**Part Two. In the Dark.**

Draco sat in front of the fire with his eyes closed. Scorpius, who was on the other side of the room eating toast, sometimes asked him a question. Draco would grunt in response, and Scorpius seemed to have given up on getting answers; the only sounds Draco heard from him now were the crunch and the small _pops _as the house-elves Apparated in to gather up the crumbs that fell to the floor.

Draco was thinking.

And when he thought about it, he was quietly appalled at how many things he had taken for granted four years ago. He hadn't tried to question the two adolescents Potter had assaulted. He hadn't asked to speak to their Healers or the Aurors who arrested Potter-though since the press and the rest of the wizarding world never really knew what Potter had been accused of, Draco wasn't sure it had been a formal arrest. He hadn't gone to the Ministry and listened to Potter's testimony. He hadn't thrashed out all the details of any particular story and looked for gaps and inconsistencies, or, alternatively, the way that it linked up with details of Potter's behavior familiar to him.

Why hadn't he?

Unfortunately, that question was all too easy for him to answer. He had wanted to deny what had happened for as long as he could, and once he accepted the truth, he had wanted it to go away. Losing Potter had hurt enough. Scraping through all the evidence and dragging it into the light hadn't been something he could bear.

_Then_. Draco thought he was rather stronger now, and energized by his encounter with Potter last night.

A charm he had set to chime when the time of his meeting approached made its soft musical sound, and Draco stood up, nodding to Scorpius. "I'm off."

"All right." Scorpius barely opened his eyes, apparently absorbed in the taste of his food. "Have a good time."

Draco snorted silently to himself as he left the room. Scorpius had finished Hogwarts, and shown no interest in doing anything else after that, either as a career or to pass the time until he inherited the Manor. Well, Draco could hardly fault him; he hadn't shown any ambition, either, the year he was twenty-one. He had still been recovering from the war and adjusting to the changed world around him, so profound and shattering was the fall from prestige into-

Draco frowned thoughtfully as he prepared to Apparate to the Ministry. Where _were _they now, the Malfoys? No one was indifferent to them after Draco's two decades of solid work, but he wasn't sure that he could call on the level of respect and fear that his father had been able to before the war, either. It might be that this was their middle age, their middlingness, their centrism.

Draco shrugged as he watched the world dissolve around him. Well, it didn't much matter, and he had to focus on the goal ahead of him now, the one that was taking him away from the house. He had kept it silent as much out of pride as anything else; if it was futile, he didn't want anyone to know.

For the first time since the organization began, Draco was going to miss a meeting of the United Potions Masters of Great Britain. He was going to the Ministry instead, to follow up on the ancient tale of the fall of a hero.

* * *

"I'm afraid that I can't let you into the Archives, Mr. Malfoy." The official facing him offered him a polite, blank smile. She was someone too young to have been at Hogwarts with him, but the right age to have grown up hearing his father's name as one of the villains'.

Draco nodded peacefully and took a vial from his robe. "Excuse me," he said. "Just a draught that I need to take for a weak heart."

Of course it wasn't, but when he opened it, the fumes were invisible and only affected the person the vial was aimed at. They swirled lazily across the air between them and into the official's nostrils. She blinked hard, twice, then sat down and stared into nothingness with an ecstatic expression. A moment later, she was snoring.

Draco snorted and slipped smoothly past her into the entrance of the Archives. The potion was his own invention, one that would give the person who sniffed it a few hours of sleep they wouldn't remember afterwards. Perfectly harmless and legal, though also, incidentally, untraceable.

And if it also affected her memory before the sleep, so that she didn't remember him standing there to be admitted, that was no problem.

The door shut behind him, and Draco started to murmur a _Lumos _Charm, but instead nearly choked on his tongue as the lights sprang up all around him, from flameless lamps that sat within alcoves, on shelves, on the floor, and under the desks that stood two to a side. Draco spun in place, trying to see the faint, marvelous threads of magic that must surely control the lamps, but couldn't. The enchantment was probably old enough to have left no visible traces, he thought.

The shelves stretched back into what looked like infinity, though logically Draco knew there was a far wall somewhere. (Well, there once had been. Perhaps someone had expanded the Ministry Archives with wizardspace). On them stood boxes, books, ledgers, scrolls, clay tablets, harps that sang history when you touched them, diaries, newspapers, slick magazines, and scribed dragons' talons. And probably other things that Draco didn't know about, too. He'd only been in here a time or two as part of an official research mission for the Wizengamot, or rather against the Wizengamot, since they had to grant access to the Archives to Potions masters when they issued a legal challenge against them.

What he wanted should be fairly near the door, as all the recent documents were. Draco held up his wand and whispered, "_Comperio _Harry Potter's trial testimony."

There was a faint, muffled thump, and then one of the lacquered boxes began to glow. Draco nodded smugly. The spell was his own, specially modified version of a Summoning Charm. He could locate the documents without moving them and thus potentially warning anyone else who might look at them that they had been disturbed.

He walked carefully across the floor towards the box, avoiding the most obvious build-ups of dust and papers so that no one who came in later and surveyed the room with a more accustomed eye would be able to detect his presence. When he reached the box, he cast a few charms that would scan for the most common defensive spells, and then a quiet incantation that many pure-blood families would have given a great deal to know, looking for personalized traps and invented spells. Nothing appeared.

Draco felt his eyebrow go up. He couldn't believe that the testimony from Potter's trial was simply sitting here unprotected. He conjured gloves of snapping energy around his hands, that should at least protect his skin from any traps his spell had unexpectedly missed, and then gingerly reached out and hooked his fingers around the box's lid.

When it flipped open and he saw the papers staring up at him, Draco frowned in disgust. _Of course. _The box was unprotected because it was the testimony Potter had _given _in trials where he captured the criminals and then had to act as a witness. Draco's wording in his version of the Summoning Spell hadn't been specific enough.

He shut the box again, stepped back and looked around thoughtfully, trying to put himself in the place of a Ministry Archivist who had to decide where to hide a bunch of incriminating documents that nonetheless must continue existing, because someone who might investigate them in the future shouldn't be able to hang the Ministry by its own rope. The hiding places he could see were all out, but he had once heard a rumor that the Archive had safes and other caches hidden in the walls, caches and safes that contained papers too important to destroy but too dangerous to leave visible.

He held up his wand again. "_Comperio _testimony from the trial of Harry Potter for torture and murder." That ought to be specific enough. How many of them could there be?

Nothing happened. The walls remained still. The shelves slumbered. The boxes didn't glow. Draco frowned again.

The only solution he could come up with was that Potter's documents wouldn't have been held in the Archive at all, but in some place more secure.

In which case, Draco had wasted his time by coming here.

He cast the spells that would remove traces of his presence, stepped out of the Archive, and quietly shut the door behind him, scowling as he tried to come up with the place that he would search next.

* * *

Draco flattened himself against a wall and waited until the two talking Aurors brushed past him. He trusted in the efficacy of his Concealment Potion-so much more reliable than a Disillusionment Charm-but they would still notice something was off if they touched him. He didn't think the Ministry hired stupid Aurors.

_Especially not after the last day. _

He had investigated every office he could get access to in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement's office, including the Head's, thinking that it would make sense they wanted to keep track of the papers that revealed Potter's mental illness and the mistakes they had made in hiring him. Perhaps they had entrusted the papers to one of Potter's close friends, or to some innocent dupe who wouldn't be told what was in them, only that they must be protected.

Nothing. Draco's respect for his opponents kept going up. They either thought like Slytherins or had learned to through tracking so many former members of Draco's House.

That left only one place that was really likely-bar some ridiculously safe and secret vault, which Draco had discounted the possibility of because he _knew _that he would have heard a rumor.

And it would be much more difficult to explain his presence _here _than it would have been if he was caught in the Archives.

The Aurors had turned the corner. Draco made his way carefully down the rest of the corridor until he stood before the great oaken door. From there, he cast several nonverbal spells that should disarm all the traps, wards, and alarms without alerting anyone.

By the time he was done, he was sweating, and his joints ached. Expending this much magical energy would once have been nothing to him, but he wasn't a careless boy anymore.

He waited five minutes after that, although his heart was shrieking in his ears so hard he might not have heard the wards if they _had _rung. Then he stepped forwards, swung the door, and was inside the office of the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt.

The man had been Potter's friend. It made sense that he would hold the papers, if only to prevent anyone else from becoming seriously disillusioned with the wizarding world's favorite hero.

The office itself was surprisingly spare, with bookshelves that mostly held serious-looking account books, a few framed photographs of Shacklebolt meeting with other wizarding leaders, and a Pensieve. Draco turned resolutely away from the Pensieve, although he knew it might help him learn more about the development of new laws that would affect the United Potions Masters, and performed his finding charm once more.

A drawer on the lower left half of the desk glowed.

Draco released his breath in a silent hiss. He was shaking. Until now, he hadn't realized how much he had staked on Shacklebolt having the appropriate papers, or on those papers existing in the first place.

The drawer bore the kind of lock that Draco had expected, one opened only by a drop of blood from the Minister himself. Draco drew a crystal vial from his pocket, one he had paid an enormous price for years ago when he had thought about taking vengeance on Shacklebolt for a petty insult.

_This is much more important, _he thought, and turned the vial precisely upside-down above the lock, watching as the drop made its slow, hesitant way downwards, trembled at the lip, and then fell.

It hit the lock. The lock shook in response and then turned to grey water, melting down and over the drawer. Draco waited until it was all gone, and then cast a spell that should detect more wards, locks, alarms, traps.

Nothing. Finally, he could hook his fingers delicately over the edge of the drawer and pull it open.

It was immediately obvious what he was searching for; the drawer was empty but for it. "It" was a single set of two sheets of parchment, hooked together with a Pasting Charm. Draco reached down, became aware his hands were trembling, and forced them to still before he actually lifted the documents out of the drawer. He didn't want to touch the sides, in case there was a charm on the metal that he hadn't detected.

He cast a few more spells that should tell him if something was hiding in the drawer disguised, but they revealed nothing, and a glance at the top piece of parchment did show the name "Harry Potter." Draco finally allowed himself to believe that he held what he had been searching for.

His face twitched oddly. His heart galloped while a sheen of cold sweat covered his skin, and he closed his eyes and breathed tremulously out.

He wanted to sit down right there on the floor and read both of them, but he knew that would be stupid when Shacklebolt-who was currently at a press conference-might come back. And he couldn't take the original papers with him, as they would be missed. Even a Copying Charm might be risky.

Instead, he skimmed intently over the papers, making sure that he looked at every line without necessarily absorbing the sense of it. He would be able to put the memory in a Pensieve and look at it more closely later, the Pensieve reproducing what was really there, not his blurry memory of it.

Even then, enough jumped out at him to make his heartbeat shake his body.

_Potter...not resisting arrest...talking about the game...Ministry is agreed...necessity of protecting Mr. Malfoy...has not requested before..._

_Protecting me from _what? Draco thought, for a moment angry enough to hunt down Potter and rip his lying tongue out with his bare hands. _And shouldn't I get a say in my own protection?_

He finished and carefully arranged the parchment back in the drawer, then shut it again. The blood lock melted back into precise and perfect coordination with the edge of the drawer. Draco smiled. He hadn't known that would happen, but he had suspected it. It was simply too much trouble to cast a blood-aligned spell every time it was needed. Instead, Shacklebolt would have one that could be dissipated by his blood, but would return when he shut the drawer.

And apparently he reached into that drawer frequently, Draco thought, eyeing a few drops of rust in the edges of the metal that would be caused by someone regularly using his blood to dissolve the lock into water. Why, four years after the fact?

Well, now Draco stood a good chance of finding out.

He departed from the office, making sure to put everything back just as it was, and slid carefully out of the Ministry, forcing himself to pay attention to his current location instead of his rush to reach the Pensieve. His precautions would do no good if he was caught, here, now, like this.

* * *

Draco sat back and closed his eyes. The fire in his room still blazed warmly, but it couldn't touch the chill that had covered his bones.

He had expected to find something in the testimony that would make him despise Potter completely, something that would stop his breath from coming short when he thought about the encounter with Potter behind the Manor. What else could reading the details of torture and murder do? Draco had been a fool in some respects, he knew that, to believe in his lover's innocence at first.

It wasn't as though he still _did, _but...

But. Somewhere beneath the surface, there was a part of him that held stubbornly to his received notions of Potter, insisting that he wasn't a good liar, that he never could have concealed proclivities towards pain from someone, like Draco, who had learned to recognize people with them during the war, and that he really _was _the warm-handed, warm-hearted man Draco had believed in and loved and lived with.

A part of him that still called Potter _Harry._

But he hadn't found confirmation either way in the testimony, only confusion.

Potter insisted quietly, over and over, that he had tortured the two teenagers, that the Ministry had to believe him, but he gave no details of what he had done or why. And then he would say that the Ministry had to play the game with him, and that it was necessary to protect "Mr. Malfoy."

Draco tensed. He had to suppress the impulse to simply _scream _when he thought about that. What in the world could Harry be protecting him from? If those two teenagers had been enemies of his, somehow, and plotting to destroy him, then Draco thought he should have had the _option _to know about it and decide what to do with them himself. And why did Harry have to torture them, and why sacrifice his life in the wizarding world to do it?

_You're calling him Harry._

Draco clamped down on his mind and held it still, the way he sometimes did with a difficult potion, until it was calm and clear and he could think of Potter the way he had to, again.

As it turned out, the testimony provided little that Draco hadn't already known, beyond that insane urge Potter apparently had to protect him. It wasn't even set up like ordinary trial testimony, which Draco knew well, having read the records from his parents' trial and his own more than once. It read more like a series of questions and answers, and the Ministry officials had been more baffled at the end than at the beginning.

_Like me._

Draco smiled sourly and shook his head. Very well. This particular hunch hadn't worked out. He would have to choose something else, and do it soon, before Potter did whatever he had come back to the wizarding world to accomplish. Draco had the feeling that he would leave again when it was accomplished, and Draco might well never see him again. He had certainly done a good job of falling off the face of the earth in the past four years.

Draco blinked, then, and wished he had thought to place a mirror in his bedroom so that he could see his own face properly.

Until that moment, he had never realized that he had decided, without hesitation, to confront Potter when he had the truth in his hands. It wasn't necessary to the project of learning why. Draco could learn enough from the records and the memories of others, including the two children Potter had tortured. Questioning them would have to be the next step.

But he did want to see Potter again, see those green eyes flash in the way they did when he was cornered, and taunt him with the fact that his precious lies had been all for nothing, that Draco had seen and known the reality of his guilt.

Wanted to touch him and keep him from running away.

Draco rose to his feet with a faint frown. That impulse could get him into trouble, if he let it. He would have to make sure that, if he confronted Potter, he did it armed with potions and spells to counter any dangerous move Potter made. What he had been thinking, throwing his wand away three nights ago?

When he opened the door of his bedroom, he met Scorpius on his way to dinner. Scorpius turned and nodded to him, then peered more closely at Draco's face. "Are you all right, Father? You look as though you've been having bad dreams."

Draco smiled back at him, although he was aware that it wasn't a cheerful smile. He would have to keep Scorpius from suspecting anything, he thought. He would only try to get in the way unnecessarily. He had put up with Potter when Potter and Draco were dating, but after the crime and the exile, Scorpius had confessed to Draco that he'd liked but never trusted Potter. "There was just something about him," he'd said.

"A few," Draco said. "I go over the past at times and wonder what else I could have done differently, what would have resulted in better outcomes. Everyone does, you know that," he added, a bit defensively, since Scorpius was giving him a long, blinking look.

"I don't," Scorpius said simply. Then he shook his head and smiled, offering his arm. "Come, Father. Let's eat together, and I can tell you about the spell that Severus Parkinson invented..."

Draco let the chatter wash over him. Scorpius's friend Severus Parkinson was a spell-creator, and Draco usually enjoyed the details of his latest explorations, similar as they were to potions.

But not tonight. Tonight, his mind kept going beyond the wards.

* * *

A shock struck those wards at precisely three in the morning, Draco saw when his eyes snapped open and focused on the illuminated clock that Scorpius had given him for his birthday last year.

For a moment, Draco's mind wandered, wondering if the attack was part of a dream. But no, the shock came again, and the way it rang in his bones-the wards were connected to him, as guardian of Malfoy Manor-told him the blow had been a heavy one.

Draco sat up, Summoned his robe and boots with a snap of his fingers, snatched his wand, and surged down the stairs. He knew exactly where the muffled strikes were coming from: the wall on the western side of the Manor gardens, a place where Draco and Potter had sometimes sat in the spring sunshine on a bench beneath the peach trees. It made sense that Potter would choose to attack first in a place he knew well.

Draco briefly dropped the Manor's anti-Apparition spells and Apparated directly from the stairs to just outside the wall. He landed with a deadly curse on his lips and turned his head, expecting to meet Potter's frustrated eyes.

Potter was outside the wall, all right, but leaning on it instead of attacking right away. He was panting, a shallow cut running across his face from his jaw to his forehead. And there was something strange about the way his robe was hanging, Draco thought.

Then Potter turned, and Draco got it. Potter's robe was soaked with so much blood that it swung away from his side, sopping wet.

"Potter!" Draco barked.

Potter stared at him with dazed eyes. Then he abruptly straightened with a snap, said, "It's all right, he's gone now," and Apparated away before Draco could stop him.

Draco was left staring at empty ground and fuming. At least, that was, until he shook his head and cast a spell that levitated him a bit above the ground, so he could get near without disrupting the traces of the battle.

And traces there were. The grass was matted together with Potter's blood, the wall was splattered with it, and the ground was churned into a mess of mud with footprints. Two sets, Draco judged. Potter's was one of them, but he had been in close quarters, circling and dodging and spinning around in fact, the other one.

Those boot tracks had a faint smoothness around the edges that suggested high-quality dragonhide; Draco had learned to recognize them during that year when he'd endured that madness about "camping" of Theo's. They were also relatively shallow on the earth. Potter's opponent was either a small wizard or someone who walked lightly. Lightly, Draco assumed. Someone who was much smaller probably wouldn't have been able to hurt Potter so badly.

Then he cast one of his own spells that detected curses, and sucked in a breath.

_No, _he decided a moment later, his mind spinning in tiny circles. _It wouldn't matter what size the attacker was, not if he used that particular spell on Potter._

The spell was called the Carver's Curse, and meant to separate the human flesh from the skeleton in the same way that a carved bird or joint would separate. Draco swallowed and stared at the place where Potter had stood before he Apparated. He knew that it was useless trying to go after him. Either Potter had already found help and wouldn't die, or he would have bled to death by now. And Draco had never learned the arcane spells that were necessary to trace an Apparition.

_Who could this have been?_

Unfortunately, the list of both his enemies and Potter's was long. Draco didn't even know what enemies Potter might have made in the past four years. Yes, he had been summarily exiled from the wizarding world, but that didn't mean that he had stayed away completely. He might have come back for visits to the Minister, given that odd testimony and the way that Shacklebolt valued it.

Then Draco closed his eyes and shook his head. He was standing here and worrying about things he couldn't change. He needed to examine the traces that the fight had left behind, instead, and see if they could tell him anything new.

There _was _something odd about the footprints of Potter's attacker, he thought when he studied them again, but he couldn't tell what. The information niggled along the edge of his mind, unmoving, refusing to come clear even when Draco ransacked his memory. Well, he would use the Pensieve memory of them later if he had to.

And now...

_Why was Potter here if it was his enemy? Unless the enemy simply tracked him down and he was at the wards of the Manor when it happened._

_Or..._

_Was he protecting me? And from what?_

Draco felt as if he understood nothing, and standing about in the dark and trying to reason the matter through didn't help. He went back to bed.

And stayed there until morning, contending with his questions and the emotion that he couldn't name as anything other than what it was: worry over Potter.


	3. To Ask

Thank you again for all the reviews!

**Part Three. To Ask.**

"Mr.-Malfoy?"

Draco knew that hesitation between his first name and his last. He only smiled and leaned on the desk while he waited for the shopkeeper to decide whether Draco was good enough to see one of Potter's former victims.

The squat woman stared at the card that Draco had given her, nibbling her lip. Then she looked up at him, obviously prepared to align herself as a barrier between Draco and the man he'd come to see.

"He hasn't done anything wrong," the woman said. "He never has. He's a good boy, Quintus is."

"I have no doubt," Draco said gently. "I only want to talk to him for ten minutes or so. I'm sure that he can make the decision as to whether he wants to see me or not, and have it stick." Actually, he wasn't sure of that at all; the only thing he knew for certain about Potter's victim, beyond his sex and his name, was that he was older now than he had been four years ago. But the words seemed to reassure the woman, who bobbed her head.

"Of course," the woman said, and then turned and called for Quintus, leaving Draco to stare around the shop. It was a small, dark, cloth-smelling place, trying to set itself up as a rival to Madam Malkin's. Malkin didn't need to fear the competition as long as it remained so dark that Draco thought the apprentices would struggle to set their stitches even, and so crowded with robes that no one could see the ones that might fit them best.

Steps called Draco's attention back behind the counter, and he turned to face Quintus Herrington.

Herrington came to a stop when he saw Draco, staring at him with an open mouth. Then he shut it and swallowed. "Er," he said, shifting both hands through his hair. "You wanted to speak with me, sir?"

Draco assessed him quickly-narrow dark eyes, hair of that silvery color you got on pure-bloods sometimes, painfully thin body-and then nodded and put the right amount of warmth into his smile. "Yes, I did." He leaned forwards and lowered his voice. "This might bring up painful memories for you, but it's possible that you could help a condemned, innocent man emerge into the sunlight again." _Or satisfy my curiosity, which is as important even though it doesn't sound like it. _"If it gets too painful, then you can stop and recover."

Herrington stared at him. "Oh, you want to speak about the night I was tortured?" he whispered.

"Yes," Draco said. "The night Harry Potter tortured you." Subtly, he waved his wand, raising a thick barrier of silence around them. He had no interest in letting someone else overhear this. "Is there anything you can tell me about that night that isn't too painful, first?"

Herrington swallowed with a grimace. Then he said, "I don't-remember much. The Healers told me when I woke up that I had two broken ribs, missing fingernails that had been pulled off, an eye that he'd almost gouged out, and a hole in my head."

Draco blinked. "Excuse me?"

"A hole in my head." Herrington patted the back of his hair. "He'd drilled a hole straight through my skull to the brain. It was small. I don't know what-what he'd intended to do with it." He shuddered. "The Healers thought that maybe he was going to pour something down it."

Draco held his stomach still with an effort. "I see. Can you tell me where you were when he attacked you?"

"That's the hell of it," Herrington said. "I can't. I know that Shirley and I were on our way back from a party one of our friends had given. I know that because they told me, later," he added, sourly. "Someone loomed up in front of us. Then it all goes blurry. I remember feeling like I was underwater. The Healers said my mind probably blocked out the memories because the pain was so bad."

Draco's throat stuck. He had to clear it, though, and say, "I see. Do you know why he did it?"

"No," Herrington said, and his voice sank. "I never learned that, either then or later. It was-so strange, you know? I feel as though I _ought _to know. Why would Harry Potter target me? Why did he hate me enough to do that? But the only thing I really remember is that figure, and then someone saying, 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'" He paused, frowning. "It was a male voice, but I don't think it was him. Because that person took us to St. Mungo's, and why would he do that when he tortured us?"

Draco nodded silently. He wanted to ask another question, but it took him long moments to find the words. "The papers said that the pressures of the war might have driven him mad." They had always said that, and so they had gone on repeating it even though they didn't know the details of Harry's crime. "Do you think that's it?"

Herrington laughed without humor. "I don't know. I can't _remember_. And I don't think Shirley can, either. Her injuries were worse than mine, and she suffered the same thing, her mind cutting off the memory of that night. It's not that I really want to remember," he added, musing now. "But that bastard nearly stole my life from me. I don't think it's fair that he should be able to steal time as well."

Draco thanked him, asked a few more questions that turned out to produce nothing new, and then left. He had to lean against the wall of the shop before he got more than five steps away.

The underwater feeling and the lack of memories could be Herrington's mind taking care of the pain for him, yes.

They were also symptoms of a Memory Charm.

Draco clenched his fists tight and reminded himself that he had _expected _baffling results. Or at least he should have, after reading the testimony. There was no single gathered pack of answers to his questions. Instead, they were scattered across the minds of various people, and he would have to gather them for himself, the same way that he found ingredients when preparing to make a potion.

So. He would speak with Shirley Colnbrook, the second of the victims, and most likely find another Memory Charm.

Draco gave a small shake of his head. He didn't mind admitting, if only to himself, that a large part of the reason he was so puzzled had to do with the nonexistent motive behind these crimes. Potter seemed to have chosen these children randomly to torture. He seemed to have cast a Memory Charm on them without reason. He had said that he was protecting Draco, but neither Herrington nor Colnbrook were related to anyone who would have a grudge against Draco. And unless the Memory Charm had wiped out his antipathy to Draco along with the night of the attack, Herrington wasn't his enemy.

Frowning, Draco turned in place and Apparated.

* * *

Colnbrook sat staring at the desk, her fingers over her face. "I never expected anyone to mention it again," she said softly. "It's overwhelming."

Draco nodded and made small encouraging noises without committing himself to anything that involved words. They sat in the empty Potions classroom with the echoes of gleeful shouts lingering around them. From what little Draco had seen as he entered at the end of class, most of the students respected Professor Colnbrook more than they had Snape, but that didn't prevent their love of the end of class.

Colnbrook sat back and stared at Draco. Draco gazed at her in return. Colnbrook was an ordinary enough woman, with a large pale forehead, long pale lashes, and thick pale brown hair wound neatly into a braid down her back. Draco would have passed her without a second glance on the street, certainly not taking her for the new Potions master of Hogwarts.

"Why do you want to know?" Colnbrook asked, and a suspicious glint had entered her eyes now.

Draco smiled sadly. He had prepared for this role. "You probably know that Harry Potter and I were lovers before he left the wizarding world," he said.

"It was so notorious I could hardly miss it." Colnbrook's fingers gripped individual strands of hair hard.

Draco nodded, making sure his eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted. "And-he never once hinted to me that he had such tendencies. I want to know why it happened and how I can avoid taking a lover who has tendencies like that again in the future. It came out of nowhere." He dropped his voice, and Colnbrook leaned in. "No warning. Nothing but smiles one day, then blood and pain the next. You were the victims of his attack, but I was the victim of my shattered trust in him."

For a moment, he thought he'd overdone it; Colnbrook leaned away from him again and stared at the wall. Perhaps he shouldn't have used the word "shattered."

But then she looked at him and said, "You do understand. You're the only one I've found other than Quintus who does. And Quintus-well. Quintus is Quintus."

Draco smiled and nodded, and then waited to see what she would tell him, understanding now that silence would be the best means to pull her thoughts out of her.

Colnbrook released her hair and sat up straighter, cheeks glowing. "He was our hero. We were told that. We don't remember the war, of course, but it didn't matter. Not when we knew that we were growing up in a safe world because of him. Not when he didn't flaunt his heroism. I remember seeing a photograph of him, one that the _Prophet _had to snap because he was ducking into a pub and they hadn't got any new shots in months. He was waving one hand and shaking his head and smiling, turning away so that you could only see half the smile. That's what he was, someone humble who really had done just one extraordinary thing and then wanted to move on instead of resting on his laurels. An ordinary hero."

Draco had to close his eyes. Was it possible for a heartbeat to sting?

"And then it turned out that he was only avoiding the light because it would have revealed him for what he really was." Colnbrook slammed her hands into the table, scowling. "Someone with sadistic tendencies, someone who didn't care about those he hurt. He could save the whole wizarding world from Voldemort, but not a pair of teenagers from himself."

Draco waited until he could safely open his eyes again. He didn't think Colnbrook, caught up in her own memories, would notice. "Yes," he whispered. "You saw him attack, then? Herrington remembers nothing."

Colnbrook abruptly flushed and glanced away. "I didn't say that," she muttered. "My mind protected me from it, the same way that his did. But I _know _he wasn't the one who took us to St. Mungo's, and that he nearly killed us, and that's enough for me." She raised one hand and touched her left ear. "He filled my ear canals with acid and smeared my fingernails in something that kept them from growing back. I didn't have use of my left arm for months, he'd broken the bone in so many places."

Draco told himself to listen, past the awful details. "Herrington described a sensation of a looming figure and an underwater slurry of loss," he said carefully. "Is that the way you would?"

"Not underwater, maybe," Colnbrook said. "I awoke feeling dreamy and like there was something important I'd forgotten." Her lips tried to form a smile, then fell back into place. "Of course, the Healers told me what it was."

_Another symptom of a Memory Charm._

Draco didn't let himself show his excitement. He murmured, "Do you feel that you're in danger from Potter, still? Surely you know the rumors that say he's returned to the wizarding world."

Colnbrook shrugged. "I don't know why he went after me in the first place. I'm as safe from him as anyone else, I reckon. He could come after me, or Herrington, or do something to someone else, or hurt you." She studied him with big, somber eyes. "I know you defended him. It infuriated me at the time, but it might put you in more danger now. What would you do if he came to you and asked you to cover up for his killings?"

Draco returned some soft, suitable answer to that, and continued asking until it became clear that Colnbrook had received nothing that could be construed as a warning. If Potter had come back because of his earlier crime, then it seemed that he didn't intend to directly threaten Colnbrook or Herrington.

It _seemed _that way. But given that Draco didn't know why the attacks had happened in the first place, it really wasn't an answer.

When he left the school, Draco leaned for a moment against the warm stones and watched several students playing Quidditch on the pitch. They yelled at each other, their voices as thin as those of crickets. The chill in the air didn't seem to bother them at all, nor the dancing grey clouds on the edge of the sky that bespoke rain.

Draco could see Potter on one of those brooms so easily, if he closed his eyes.

He had been annoying, self-righteous, a plague on Draco's family and freedom and sense of honor, but he hadn't been someone Draco could ever see engaging in reckless murder and torture. No, if there was an answer as to why Potter had done this, he didn't think it lay in their past at school.

He turned and walked slowly towards Hogsmeade, concentrating on the crunch of his boots in the grass rather than the wild, directionless spinning of his mind.

* * *

Draco finished another draught of the Concealment Potion and rose to his feet. There was no one else he could question about the assault on Herrington and Colnbrook, no direct witness. He could go to St. Mungo's and speak with the Healers who had tended the two children, but they could only give him evidence of the wounds, not evidence of who had caused them, and Draco didn't think they were lying about that; it would have been too easy to check.

So that left one other, obvious path.

He slipped out of his bedroom and nearly ran headlong into Scorpius, who was walking down the corridor muttering to himself. Draco stood still. The Concealment Potion would not survive direct contact with someone else, at least not for more than a second or two.

"...if he's right, then the spell ought to have the intended effect," Scorpius was saying. "But his math was wrong on the Arithmancy equations. Why should I think it would be right here? That two, for instance. What's it doing over _there_?" He paused and ruffled the parchment, tilting his head to the side as if that would make the numbers change shape or placement. "If he means it to be under the ten, then the equation is simple enough, but wrong. Or is it meant to be the square root of..."

He wandered off. Draco smiled after him. Scorpius was in the brooding period, he thought, when his mind bubbled in his skull but he hadn't chosen his direction yet. When he _did _choose it, Draco thought it would be decidedly more spectacular than his own muted career as a Potions master.

That encounter successfully avoided, Draco traveled down the stairs and towards the front door. He passed one house-elf slamming its head into the wall and moaning about how Scorpius had punished it. Draco rolled his eyes. The elf had probably stepped into Scorpius's way as he went by, and Scorpius wouldn't lightly brook an interruption into his thoughts.

When he came out into the gardens, he stood with his eyes closed for a moment, turning his head. They'd had rain last night, and it seemed to have released a gush of moisture and sweetness from the ground, the way it always did. He could hear the light, shrill scream of a peacock in the distance, and the heavy swaying of the fruit trees. The grass crunched lightly beneath his feet as he passed; it was one reason that Draco mostly used the Concealment Potion indoors.

But he intended to be in position long before his prey arrived, which would help to limit the noise he made.

He reached the wall without incident and went up the stones easily, his fingers finding holes that he had forgotten existed in his conscious brain. When he dropped down on the other side, he found that he had to worry about the creaking of his knees giving him away, as well as the temptation to cry out when his back was wrenched. Draco clamped down on his tongue and crouched.

Potter was there already, where Draco hadn't expected to see him before midnight, his back to the walls as he carefully watched the fields beyond. Now and then he raised his wand when a bird cried or a breeze shifted. He always shook his head and lowered it again.

Draco studied him carefully. Potter moved with a limp, but the Carver's Curse had obviously been healed, which meant he had some confederate within the wizarding world. Draco knew that Potter had never been very good with healing spells.

_Unless that was another lie._

But Draco had no intention of becoming involved in endless levels of deception, driving himself mad by wondering if there was always one more angle he hadn't considered, if he was doing exactly what his enemies wanted him to by wondering, and then acting wildly because that might be the opposite of what they wanted. He had come here for one purpose, and after watching Potter for ten minutes and noting no signs that he was waiting for someone, he rose to his feet and moved forwards, brushing his fingers along Potter's shoulder.

Potter yelped and spun around. His eyes seemed to beat like his heart, and he leveled his wand at Draco in the few moments before the Concealment Potion faded and he became visible. Then his arm dropped as though someone had cut his tendons and he turned away, looking anxiously back towards the Manor.

Draco shook his head. "I won't unleash the guard peacocks on you," he said, and then wondered why. That had once been a running joke between him and Potter. He thought it hardly a good idea to bring up now.

Potter gave him a quick glance, then nodded. "I never thought you would," he said. "I was never afraid of _you_."

Draco leaned against the wall, knowing he should spare more attention for Potter's wand hand, keeping his gaze on his face anyway. "Then tell me what you're afraid of," he said. "Tell me about your dark nature, what made you hate those children in the first place. I've spoken to both of them, you know."

"Then you know the depths of my depravity." Potter turned and stared into the darkness.

"Tell me what you're afraid of," Draco repeated, and shifted closer. This near, he could see other differences between this Potter and the one of his memory. He had shoulders that never seemed to stop hunching, and fingers that crawled continuously.

"This is a game," Potter said, to the night instead of to him. "Because someone else made the first move, and then I made it so. You can never know. I promised that, and I'll keep my promise." He glanced at Draco one more time, then turned away. His body tensed as an owl's call echoed from a distance, then relaxed as much as it could.

"I can never know _what_?" Draco asked. "And why?" He shifted closer again, wondering if he could grab Potter's wand before Potter realized what was going on.

"The truth," Potter said, blinking at him. Apparently it hadn't occurred to him that there could be more than one thing Draco couldn't know.

"And why not?" Draco's hand shook on his wand. He closed his eyes and kept himself in the darkness with his breathing for a few seconds.

"Because," Potter said, in the gentlest voice Draco had ever heard from a torturer, "it would destroy you."

"You think," Draco said, the words sticking in his throat like a bone. "You think this _hasn't _destroyed me? To have you gone? To have you admit these crimes to me?" He looked at Potter, his eyes quicker to open again than his mouth. Potter stared at his dangling wand and shook his head.

"I inflicted a wound on you," he whispered. "I know. I'm sorry. But it's one you can recover from." He looked at Draco again, and his hands twitched, on the verge of reaching out. "This one, you wouldn't."

Draco would have pounded his fists against the wall and screamed at the sky if he was a little bit younger. As it was, he clenched his teeth down and said, as quietly as he could, "Why don't you let me decide that?"

"There's no way _to _do that," Potter murmured, "short of telling you the horrible thing and then letting you react to it. Which would be the same as inflicting the wound." He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I said that. And I'm still sorrier than you can know for leaving you." His voice abruptly broke in the middle, and he turned his head away to stare at the ground. "I wish-I would give a lot to come back to you. To have our lives be exactly the same as they were before I found this out. Damn the way I look, anyway."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "You're not going to convince me you did this because Herrington and Colnbrook made fun of the way you look, Potter."

"My damn eyes," Potter rambled on, as if he hadn't heard Draco. "You'd think twenty years in the Aurors would be enough. There's no need to go on looking everywhere after that, is there? But I couldn't change the way I look."

Draco shifted closer, hardly daring to breathe in case he disturbed Potter's confession. So Potter was talking about the way he saw things, rather than his looks.

Not that that helped Draco understand what he was talking about in general, of course.

"And who knows?" Potter said, his whisper rambling and purring. "I can't-I'm sure that I can't change things now. But if I hadn't looked in the first place, would it ever have happened? Maybe not. There are some people who feel threatened with a direct gaze, but not if you squint at them out of the corner of your eye. Maybe I could have done that. Maybe it would have been enough."

Draco waited, but the rest of Potter's words slid into silence. He was leaning nearer Draco now, in a way that told Draco he probably wasn't conscious of having moved. Draco waited some more, and still nothing happened.

He had to change the balance. So he said, "I don't believe you hurt Herrington and Colnbrook."

Potter's head jerked up, and the look in his eyes was so wild that Draco skittered back a step. Potter shook his head and spoke with spit flying from his lips. "No, no, Draco, you _have _to believe me. I can see you at a distance and it'll be all right, but I can't see you dead. You can't-I'd rather lie to you all my life than see you hurt."

"You fucking idiot," Draco said, "you think it didn't hurt when you left? You think it didn't hurt when I believed you? _I want you back._ You broke up my life, and for the sake of _what? _A bloody _game_? Something I can't even understand, much less care about? You ignorant _fuck. _I was in love with you."

"Was," Potter said eagerly, although he'd staggered when Draco said those last words and didn't yet look as if he'd recovered. "_Was_. You still have the chance to heal from this, Draco, to walk away and not look back. You're not in love with me now, are you? The past tense is important. Walk away and don't look back."

Draco was sure of his ground now, although still not sure of his reasons. He reached out and grasped Harry's collar, hauling him close. A week ago he would have been sure this move would get him killed; now, there was nothing in the world he believed less. Harry came with the tug, gasping, his eyelashes fluttering as if he would faint.

"You ignorant fuck," Draco repeated. "I know that you loved me, too." He had once known no such thing, especially right after Harry left, but the certainty was like granite within him now. "Tell me what happened. That's the only way you can make up for what you did, for leaving me like this."

Harry tensed, his eyes darting around, as if he thought they might have an audience. Draco looked into the darkness, unimpressed if so, but about ready to invite someone else to join in.

"I love you enough to know how you would react," Harry whispered. "I _told _you. You have a chance at a normal life now. You won't if I tell you."

"Is it some wide-ranging conspiracy aimed at Malfoys?" Draco tightened his grip and felt his fingernails scraping against skin at Harry's neck as well as cloth. His pulse pounded and he leaned closer still. "I can handle it. Is it a personal enemy? I can take care of that, too. Do you know some secret about my bloodline, my heritage, that you don't think I can live with? I would put up with knowing that I had a Muggleborn grandfather, Harry, just to have you back."

Harry shook his head, and intolerably, the look in his eyes had shifted to one of pity. "You couldn't live with this, Draco," he said. "I'm sorry, but when I found out, I knew you couldn't. That's why I had to shelter you from the knowledge."

"How does _torture _help with that?" The words burst out of Draco before he could stop them.

"That's good, that's good," Harry whispered, as if encouraging a frightened child to go to bed. "Believe that. Say those words. Think them. Weave them into your life. It's the only way to make things right." And then, with a strong jerk, he broke from Draco and danced backwards.

"If you ever found out the secret," he said, with a faint smile, "then you'd thank me for keeping it. Of course, if you found out the secret, it would be because I'd failed in my duty."

"I'm not a child," Draco said, throat and voice both thickened. "You don't have to make decisions for me. Tell me, and we'll deal with it together."

Harry shook his head. "I made my decision four years ago. It's the kind there's no coming back from."

"Harry." The sound of his first name made Harry orient on him, and Draco used that moment. "Did you torture those children?"

"Yes. Of course."

And he was gone into the darkness again. Draco stood, listening, until he was sure that he heard the distant _pop_ of someone Apparating.

He turned back to the Manor, blood thrumming so hard it was difficult to walk, but sure of one thing: he was going to find out and decide for himself whether the effect of that secret was so shattering as Harry believed.

He paused when he saw something in the grass behind him, and bent low. There was the perfect print of a boot, dragonhide, light in the step.

Someone had been listening to their conversation.


	4. To Answer

Thank you again for all the reviews!

**Part IV. To Answer.**

Draco stepped back from his cauldron and watched as the smoke billowed up to the ceiling. It was supposed to do that, but he still winced from the acrid scent. This was less complicated and more crude than most of the potions he brewed. But practical necessity could reconcile him to aesthetic ugliness.

When the smoke slowed to a few wisps that smelled less like rotten eggs than rotting fruit, he reached out and plucked the surface of the potion with a finger. The liquid clung to it, forming a green sheath around the skin. Draco reached into his mouth, took out a drop of saliva, and added it to the sheath. At once it softened, sagged, and collapsed back into the potion.

Draco nodded shortly. The potion had the scent of him, and he was the only one for whom it would work. Anyone else analyzing it would come up with the various muddled elements of a failed experiment. He closed his eyes and bowed his head, trying to think only calming thoughts as he waited for the potion to settle to a slow boil.

_Who had it been?_

He grimaced. That wasn't a calming thought, to know that someone had stood and watched him and Harry bicker, so close that Draco could have touched him if he had moved his elbow back. But he didn't think Harry had seen him, either, or he would have warned Draco with a flicker of his eyes, a nod of his head, _something_.

_You're assuming that your initial impression of him from years ago is true, and that he isn't a good liar. But he managed to lie to you well enough about having tortured Herrington and Colnbrook that you believed him._

Draco sighed. He didn't think Harry was in league with this person, or he wouldn't have been distressed by the thought of him or talked in such open terms about protecting Draco from him. But he had no idea who else it could have been but someone in league with Harry. An ally turned enemy? Was that the reason for the Carver's Curse? Or was the curse meant to draw Draco's suspicion away from the real reason, so that he wouldn't look too closely at this mysterious person while he was investigating the causes of Harry's actions?

Draco shook his head. Once again, questions that led in no direction and had no end, that were meant only to distract him. He would not pay attention to them, because that would mean ignoring the far more intriguing web that was the center of this mystery.

He had almost given up, he realized, before meeting Harry last night. The threads he touched melted away like dew in sunlight. He had begun to believe that no one except Harry knew anything-which would certainly be the best way for Harry to safeguard the secret-and that he would never yield any information to Draco no matter what Draco said or did. He had lived for four years with this sour love in the back of his mind. He could go on doing it.

But Harry had changed things, as he so often did. Draco could no longer believe in his guilt, but he could believe in the watcher. Whether conspiracy, single enemy, or delusion that Harry had dreamed up, Draco intended to do as he should have done and confront it.

_It was so easy not to, though._

Draco sighed. Yes, it had been. Without thinking, he had drifted into the mode of middling Malfoy-socially respectable Malfoy, Malfoy who had hauled the family name back into the regions of good taste again but could do nothing else with it. It was left to his son to be glorious, the way that his father, in a disastrous way, had been. Scorpius would have investigated and understood the mystery at once. Lucius would never have borne with Narcissa attempting to distance herself from him.

Draco did, because that was the patched and muddled character he had.

But there was no law of nature that said he _must _be that way. He would change things, by force if he had to.

The potion gave a small noise that sounded like plastic parting from the sides of the cauldron. Draco took a step closer, took a deep breath, and dipped in a ladle that was large enough to make his arm hurt.

When he held the potion closer to his nose, he almost fainted from the stink. It smelled like the efforts of several dozen dogs to bury a favored tree in shit, after the sun had warmed the tree for a decade. But he swallowed it anyway, and then stood there for a moment, swaying, while the potion changed the composition of his body and adjusted some of his glands.

Draco opened his eyes, stepped out of the lab, faced a mirror, and thought about his nose running.

It began to-immediately, dramatically, with large clots of snot dripping out of his nostrils. Draco thought about it stopping, and it stopped. After he had spelled himself clean, he blinked twice.

His eyes turned red at the corners, and large, clear drops that were not tears leaked out of them. Another blink stopped that, another cleaning spell finished it off. Draco smiled and cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his voice croaked and limped, and he sounded as if a horrid cold would carry him away tomorrow. Again he cleared his throat, and this time he could bid his reflection farewell in a normal voice.

The potion would give him, for the next twenty-four hours after his swallow, the ability to look sick or deep in mourning at command. The first would be helpful for fooling the enemy who had been spying on him and Harry, and making him think that Draco was incapacitated if necessary. The second could mime the emotion that Draco would never bring to the surface for strangers.

Or people like the ones he was going to talk to now, out of desperation. He hadn't spoken to them in the past four years because they had nothing in common with Harry gone, and not since Harry had returned because he saw no reason to breach the wall of silence.

Now, he wanted to see what Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger could tell him.

* * *

"_Malfoy_?"

The voice was practically a yelp, filled with so many emotions that Draco couldn't distinguish them all. He kept his head bowed, the tears leaking from his eyes, but made a mental note that Ron Weasley hadn't been prepared for his visit, the way that Draco would have expected him to be if Harry had warned him.

"What are you doing here?" Weasley asked a moment later, voice calmer now, but wary. Draco looked up at him, blinking hard against the stinging irritation of the tears, and saw the wand aimed at him. He was standing on the doorstep of Weasley's small house in Hogsmeade, and he knew that he would probably feel the blast of a curse against his ribs any minute, unless he spoke quickly.

"Weasley," he whispered. "Please. Help me. I need to catch up with Harry as quickly as possible. Do you know where he is? Where he's gone? I need to say-I'm sorry. I need to give him a message." He worked a convincing sob up in his throat, and the tears dripped faster. "I didn't understand why he did what he did, but I do now."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Weasley was arching away from him as though he wanted to put some distance between himself and Draco, while all the time staring at him with dreadful fascination. "I haven't seen Harry for four years. You're wasting your time here."

As he had been sure that Weasley hadn't been prepared for his coming at first, so Draco was sure that this was a lie. He only shook his head and stepped forwards as if he hadn't heard. Weasley wavered, on the verge of cursing him, but gave way with another kind of curse. Draco made out wooden walls and a cot in a corner where a red-haired toddler, probably one of Weasley's grandchildren, watched him with wide eyes, and turned away, sitting down on the nearest chair.

"You have to get a message to him for me," he whispered. "You're his best friend, the one who must know where he's hiding. Someone had to help him heal from the Carver's Curse, and you're the best choice. Please, Weasley, just once. Even if he won't come and speak to me face-to-face, I think he owes me the chance to explain."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Weasley repeated, but it sounded weaker this time. He flopped down in the chair next to Draco and sighed, scratching at hair that was riddled with grey now, just like Harry's, just like Draco's. "Bloody hell, Harry, you didn't tell me this would happen," he complained under his breath.

Which only confirmed that Harry had been with him, of course. Draco stopped most of the tears with a blink, added a scratchiness to his throat, and whispered, "You'll tell me, then?"

Weasley sat up and glared at him in what looked like honestly offended surprise. "What made you think _that_? Yeah, maybe I'll tell you something about him, because I _have _seen him. But you abandoned him when he needed you most. I don't think I'll forgive that, even if he does."

Draco shook his head. "I would have defended him for the rest of my life. He confessed to me, and I accepted that." He hesitated. He wasn't sure that he could expose what he had felt at the time in front of a Weasley.

"But it hurt so much already that you didn't have the strength for another battle," Weasley interrupted. "You should have done more, dug deeper, tried harder, but you were exhausted, so you let him go."

Draco squirmed on his chair. He didn't know that he liked Weasley instinctively understanding what he had felt much better. He cleared his throat for reasons having nothing to do with the potion, and asked, "What do you know? When did you start believing his confession, or stop believing it?"

"I never believed it," Weasley said simply. "My best mate would never do something like that. If he could have, I would have seen signs of it before then, as long as I'd known him. I hunted him down and beat the truth out of him. He was smart enough not to deny it when he saw that I already knew about the lies."

Draco closed his hands into fists, but kept them hidden in his lap, so that Weasley wouldn't notice and get the wrong impression. That was what he should have done: keep up the hunt, keep moving, no matter what weapons Harry tried to wield against him. It was easy to say that of course Weasley had known Harry better, had known how he would react and what he would do, but that didn't actually lessen the sour tang of the guilt in the back of Draco's throat.

"When he told me the reasons he had to leave the wizarding world, I agreed with him, although I thought it was stupid for him to have got himself into that situation in the first place." Weasley sneaked a sideways look at him. "And that reason is the one thing that I know he would _never _want me to tell you, Malfoy, so you don't want to waste your breath asking."

Draco blew the wasted breath outwards and gave a short nod. "Fine. Then perhaps you can tell me something else. Why did he come up with a false confession for me?"

"To make you _stop asking_," Weasley said. "Yes, you were exhausted at the time, but you would have recovered, and then you would have hunted him down. Stay persistent for long enough, and he might have been unable to avoid talking to you. And that would mean all his effort was wasted."

Draco leaned forwards. He knew Weasley didn't care about him in the way that he did Harry, although he'd grudgingly accepted Draco and Harry dating. "Tell me one more thing, then, Weasley, since you know his secret," he said. "Do you think he's right, and that the secret he's concealing _would _destroy me?"

Weasley winced, and was silent.

"Well?" Draco pressed. He hadn't realized how his heart was beating until he spoke the words. He licked his lips and pressed ahead some more as Weasley stayed silent, staring at his feet. "Do you think so?"

"I think it would have, yes," Weasley whispered. "But I also don't think that he had the right to make the decision for you." His eyes rose to meet Draco's as if dragged. "I think you should have been the one to set certain boundaries. He acted on what he _assumed _was true about you, rather than what he knew was true."

"But you think he's right anyway," Draco said. His breath was coming so short that he felt as if he was about to faint. He swallowed and shifted his feet. He wanted to say something else, but he didn't know what.

"Yeah." Weasley rose to his feet as though someone had come into the room and seen him sitting politely next to a Malfoy. "This has been a great visit," he said cheerily. "But you really should go now."

Draco shook his head. "A few more questions. What was he doing that evening when he found Herrington and Colnbrook? One aspect of his confession that never made sense to me was why he was at that particular point behind the Ministry at that particular point in time."

Weasley gave him an astonished look. "Because he _works _there," he said, and instantly corrected himself. "Worked. Why else would he run across a random torture session in the middle of-" His mouth slammed shut, and Draco smiled, because someone else in the room knew what being about to faint felt like.

"I see," he said. "So he _wasn't _the one who tortured them. Thank you for telling me without telling me." He stood up himself and made his way towards the door.

Weasley trailed him, clucking like an anxious house-elf. "You don't understand, Malfoy," he said. "I didn't-I mean, a best friend's defensive instincts aren't the most reliable guides to the situation, you know?" He chuckled. It made a sickly click in his throat. "I didn't mean that he _ran across _it. I meant that he caused it. Of course."

"You already said that you never believed he did it," Draco said quietly. "At least have the grace to use proper English now. You said what you meant, but you don't have to worry. Harry won't hear about this from me, and if he ever learns of it, then I hope I can convince him not to count it as a betrayal."

Weasley folded his arms. "Everything's a _mess_," he said. "I have to worry about you defending me to my best friend, when he should just have had the courage to speak the truth to you in the first place or the luck not to be involved in this. Or the sense to never start dating you," he added.

Draco had the feeling it was a weak shot, taken from a past where things had been simpler, at least for Weasley, but there was no reason for him to accept that, either. So he bared his teeth back and said, as sweetly as he could, "I often wonder what would have happened if one went further back, and I'd met him first, before you could ask to see his scar."

Weasley was still spluttering when Draco Apparated.

* * *

"I know which potion you've used, Malfoy."

Hermione Granger-she'd kept her own name after the marriage-announced this without looking up from the stack of paper in front of her, doubtless mostly forms that she needed to sign in her position as Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Draco blinked, sent a silent command to clear his throat and his eyes of the phlegm and tears he had intended to produce, and then sat down across from her to study her.

Granger made an annoyed sound in her throat finally and looked up, shaking her hair back from her face so that it made a sort of frizzy halo around her ears. Draco bit his lip to avoid blurting out any of the unfortunate things that had occurred to him when he saw that.

Granger leaned forwards and said, "I know that you aren't sobbing about Harry. That's not like you. You did your weeping in private after he left. You want to know, now, why he went and what he thought was more important than staying at your side."

"And why he came back," Draco said, seeing no reason not to play along since she seemed to know everything already. "That's the complete list."

He might have imagined the hint of a smile at the corner of Granger's mouth. "I promised him," she said, "that I wouldn't reveal anything."

"That promise has loopholes," Draco said. "Or you would have ordered me out of the room right away."

"I don't know that you deserve to know what they are." Granger's eyes hardened again. "Considering that you abandoned him without a backwards glance at the last."

"After _he _told me that he'd tortured and nearly murdered two people," Draco said. "Adolescents, who compared to him were harmless. Even if they attacked him, he was trained to handle it in other ways. He was very convincing, shuddering as if his own actions disgusted him. I can see other reasons for that, _now, _but I believed him at the time. And I do resent that he trusted you and told you the truth over me." He hadn't realized, until he heard the deepness of his voice on those last words, exactly how much he resented it.

"Ron beat it out of him, and Ron told me." Granger shook her head. "But I really see no reason to tell you. You can find out other ways."

"I've already tried asking Harry, asking Herrington and Colnbrook, and asking you," Draco said. "And-" Then he stopped, because he doubted that Granger, who worked in the Ministry, would approve of his looking up the trial testimony that Shacklebolt saw fit to keep inside his desk. "I don't know what else you would advise me to do," he finished, with a huff that he knew was childish, but only made Granger blink at him slowly, as though she was considering his words.

"You're the one who has to figure that out," she said at last, and started to turn back to her paperwork. She did pause to add, "And you'll have to decide if the truth you might learn if you question him is worth the pain of learning that truth."

Draco tried to ask her what she meant, but his words met a stubborn wall of silence. In the end, Draco stood up, shaking his head, and moved towards the door. Granger continued to work behind him, or so he thought, but when he paused, Draco realized that he couldn't hear the scratch of her quill.

"I _am _going to find out what's going on, and I _am _going to get him back," he said softly, listening to the way that silence rang. "That's a promise."

"Then I reckon you've decided the pain of learning the truth is worth the truth itself," Granger said, and the scratching started again.

Draco let the door fall to behind him, despite the temptation to slam it.

* * *

"Are you well? I thought you hadn't been looking yourself lately."

Once again, Amanda Galloway had lingered behind to speak with him at the latest meeting of the United Potions Masters, and once again Draco shook his head to find her topic of conversation so personal. He kept his face bowed so that she wouldn't see his expression, though, busying himself with constant sorting of papers and closing of folders.

"There were a few nights I didn't sleep well," he said. "Blows against the wards. The necessity for making sure that some of the enemies my father and my son made haven't crossed the boundaries."

"I would worry about Potter before I would worry about schoolboys," Galloway said, and lowered her voice after an ostentatious glance at the door. "People are still seeing him in Wiltshire, you know."

"Yes," Draco said, and tucked away the last of his folders. "I read about that in the _Prophet._" He gave Galloway an edged smile that he hoped would encourage her to speak of something else or back off, and started to step around her, towards the door.

She put her hand on his arm, ignoring his look. "I wanted to offer you something," she said. "A gift."

Draco kept his hand at his side. People like Galloway, while allies, never gave away something for free. "Or a loan," he said. "What's the interest?"

Galloway's smile was slow in coming. "You did a service for me sometime ago," she said. "I don't think you noticed at the time, but you removed Ernest McKay from my back."

Draco frowned. He could vaguely remember that McKay had been disruptive a few years ago, and Draco had finally assigned him to a task of historical research that would take six months even with house-elves to do the mundane tasks. "I didn't know you were enemies," he said. That was the sort of thing he should have known about, the sort of thing that could well tear apart the United Potions Masters.

"I would call us _rivals_," Galloway said. "I could have handled him, but you sent the message, which I appreciated, that you wouldn't allow his grandstanding to control the meetings. I though I could repay you with a potion, but your own skills are greater than mine." She said it with no envy or bravado that Draco could hear in her voice. She was someone who admitted the plain truth and saw no reason to admit more than that, Draco thought. "Now, though, I've invented a potion that might play its part in keeping you safe." She dug a glass vial out of her pocket and held it up so that he could see it, not yet extending it.

Draco studied the potion inside carefully. It was red and viscous, trembling with what might have been the natural motion of Galloway's hand or some internal property of its own. Internal property, Draco diagnosed after a moment, and that thick scarlet color, with floating black bits like dried blood, meant it had a dragon's blood base. Lots of interesting things to build on a dragon's blood base, but Draco had never seen any that looked _exactly _like this potion.

"Interesting," he said quietly. "What does it do?"

"It works a bit like _Felix Felicis_," Galloway said, which made Draco jerk his head around, because brewers had been searching for a potion that would replicate that one's effects without using all the expensive ingredients for years. Galloway looked amused, though, and shook her head. "Works a _bit _like it. It only affects one aspect of your life, not all the myriad ones that Liquid Luck can. And it's best if..." She paused a moment, searching for words, and Draco waited in silent fascination. He had no impatience where his craft was concerned.

"It works best if you pour a bit of your own blood into it," Galloway said.

Draco had misunderstood the nature of her hesitation. He looked Galloway right in the eye and shook his head.

"There's no law on the books against blood magic if you use your own blood in a potion," Galloway said quickly. "Only the blood of others, and only in spells. You'll be the one ingesting this potion. It affects only you."

"If it works like _Felix Felicis, _then I suspect the Ministry might categorize it as a potion affecting others," Draco murmured.

Galloway smiled. "Only if they know about it. And I don't intend to register it." She dropped the vial into Draco's hand. Draco was impressed that she had read his body language enough to know that he would catch it instead of allowing it to drop and shatter. He held up the vial to his eye again and shook it. The potion traveled far too slowly from side to side, more slowly than it should if the dragon's blood base was pure.

"You've accomplished something grand, if this is what I think it is," he said casually, without turning away from the potion. "I can't imagine why you wouldn't credit for it."

Galloway snorted. "Because I always intended the potion to be for my use and the use of perhaps one other, someone who required it. And because there are some people I've met whose names or crimes I would have to expose if the potion was mass-produced, or even common."

Draco nodded. He could appreciate such restrictions. He started to slide the vial into a pocket, and then paused. "How long does it last? Twenty-four hours, or until sunrise or sunset?"

Galloway smiled. "This is why you're the best of them," she said. "Few of them would have asked that question. Twenty-four hours. I hold by the numerical definition of a day in preference to the solar definition."

Draco nodded. That was a preference he would record in his notes, and keep in mind in case someone ever asked the United Potions Masters of Great Britain for a brewer who followed that rule. It also gave them something plausible to talk about, in case anyone had noticed Galloway lingering behind.

They parted soon after, and Draco kept his hand away from his pocket and the vial that rode there, but he could still hear the soft sloshing.

* * *

Draco coughed. The potion was full of a thickness that doubtless came from the shredded nightshade Galloway had added to the base, and it had taken forever to swallow, as if he was choking dry bread down. But it was done now, and once again he waited beside the wall where Potter had come before.

_No_, he thought then. _I might as well make the full transition if I'm going to call him by his first name part of the time. He's Harry._

Harry was a creature of habit, and more to the point, Draco doubted he would have come back to the wizarding world at all if he really didn't want Draco to figure this mystery out. Draco had planned on investigating the place where someone had attacked Herrington and Colnbrook, but thanks to Galloway's potion, he thought this might offer a more helpful route.

He paced back and forth and tried not to imagine that he could hear the potion sloshing in his stomach. He couldn't. Everything he knew about potions with a base of dragon's blood told him that his stomach would have broken it down to its components almost at once, with some space and time left over for dealing with the dangerous ones like the shredded nightshade, and that the magic would have spread through his limbs by now.

Luck, Galloway had said. Draco had concentrated as hard as he could on finding out the answer to why Harry had come back but didn't want to tell him the truth, and that would have to do.

He stared up at the moon and thought about casting a Disillusionment Charm on himself. But he wanted Harry to know he was here from the beginning. That way, he couldn't say later that Draco had tricked him. Draco was trying to do more than find an answer; he was trying to rekindle a love affair that he had once thought would last forever.

_I want that back._

A movement near him made him drop and crouch, but it was only Harry, manifesting out of the darkness and staring at him with wide eyes. A moment later, he shook his head and tucked his wand away, looking over Draco's shoulder as though he expected to see the hidden watcher there.

"Hullo, Harry." Draco kept his voice as relaxed and cordial as he could. "I hope that you don't think I'm making your life more difficult by ambushing you like this, but I couldn't see any other way of making sure I would meet you."

"You are making my life more difficult, just by existing." Harry pushed both hands through his hair. Then he dropped them and spoke with a fragile dignity. "Draco, I've told you all I can. I hope that you'll accept it and step away from me to live a better life. What are all the sacrifices that I've made for, if not for that?"

"You once knew me better than that," Draco said evenly. "In fact, you constructed a detailed false confession to throw me off the trial because you knew I wouldn't stop digging until I knew the full truth."

Harry's muscles tensed. "You can still give it up," he said, voice toneless. "Draco, I've labored to keep you _safe_, as well as ignorant. Yes, the truth would destroy you, but it might do more than that."

"Or more literally than that?" Draco shook his head. "I want to know who has such power to threaten you, Harry. If it's political enemies that I've made through my activities in the last few years, then I think I might know better how to fight them than you would. And I know it's none of your friends, or Weasley and Granger wouldn't have spoken to me in the way they did."

Harry blinked at him. "You went to talk to Ron and Hermione?"

"Of course," Draco said. "I love you."

Harry closed his eyes and whispered, "I would have given the world to hear that four years ago."

"Then I'm sorry I wasn't more persistent," Draco said. He became aware that his palms were sweating and wiped them off against his trousers. He was trying to be calm, but it was more difficult than he had expected, like holding a large glass ball while walking with a bucket of water on his head. "But I have been now. I think I deserve your trust and confidence if anyone can, Harry. Won't you tell me?"

Harry took a step towards them, and then paused. His face was so bright with misery that Draco lost his last shred of belief-if he had had one left-that Harry had actually tortured Herrington and Colnbrook.

Instead, he had protected someone who had. Draco wondered if he had been on the wrong track and it was actually someone else Harry loved, like his former wife or one of his children. But no, that wouldn't fit with the statement that the truth would destroy Draco if he found out.

"I'm sorry," Harry whispered. "I can't."

He turned aside, and one of his pockets flapped open in the moment before he Apparated. Draco tasted the dragon's blood of the potion in his throat and swallowed, but not to get rid of it. He had the feeling that he knew what this was as he watched the parchment sweep out of Harry's pocket and to the ground. He picked it up and smoothed it out.

It was a letter. It bore no signature, and if there was a seal, it had been stripped off, possibly by Harry when he opened it.

_Dear Mr. Potter,_

_ How are you? I believe it's four years since we last spoke. You know why, and I know why, and I must say, it's been a delight to watch you writhe in pain from a distance. I have someone who sends me regular reports from the Muggle world. As I'm sure you'll remember, I know all sorts of people._

_ I've honored the bargain we've made, but I find myself growing bored. Being _good _takes no effort for you, but it requires holding back my impulses and ignoring the people who would suffer from a dose of my punishment if I wasn't doing the holding back. I find it distasteful. And I begin to think that your suffering and the fate I avoided because of doing what you asked are not reward enough to make up for denying myself._

_ I want to start closer to home this time, however. Four years changes many things. But I also want you to come back. It might be that an expression of agony on your face would make up for the denial._

_ So. Do come back. We'll see how long the dance lasts this time, how close one of us comes before we cross over the line. _

_ And keep in mind that this _is _your fault. If you hadn't looked at me and recognized me for what I was the first time we met properly, then I wouldn't have begun to flaunt my talents, and everything would have stayed exactly the same. You could have had the life you want and need, and I could have had mine._

Draco clenched his fingers shut on the letter and Apparated without thought, landing in the meeting room of the United Potions Masters of Great Britain. There, he leaned against the wall and let his heart roar in his ears like water would if he were drowning.

He needed no signature to identify the letter-writer, as he would have needed no time to identify the footprints of the watcher if he had been thinking. Or perhaps, if he had more easily parted the curtains of his mind to let the incredible thought in.

It was Scorpius's handwriting.


	5. In the Light

Thank you again for all the reviews!

**Part V. In the Light.**

Draco didn't know how long he stood there, while freezing waves alternating with hot ones swept over him. He wanted to weep, to protest that he hadn't known the truth about Scorpius and no one could make him absorb it now, to smash a clenched fist into the walls and dare them to defy him, to brew a potion that would kill him, to find Harry and confront him and tell him the that he knew the truth he had been hiding and so Harry's sacrifice was useless.

Thought would not come out of that clashing chaos of emotions and impulses. In the end, Draco had to sit down at the table where matters of law and brewing policy—rational things—had been discussed not long ago, and put his head between his knees. The rush of his blood made him have to listen to his body, and then he finally forced away the shock and the shaking of his hands and stood up again.

Yes, Harry's sacrifice was useless. But Draco could see why he had made it, now, and why he hadn't held any faith that Draco would believe him if he tried to confess the truth.

Even now, Draco's skin stung with sweat and his head whirled with the hope that it had been a mistake, that Scorpius might have written the letter but not tortured Herrington and Colnbrook, that he was the accomplice of someone more powerful, or that Draco could blame some arcane influence of the Dark Mark on his own arm and on Lucius's, passing down through the blood.

Except that Draco had carefully studied the influence of such magical brands before he had even sired Scorpius, because the worry had not been beyond the realm of possibility. His study had satisfied him that the Mark would have had to be in the family for generations to affect Scorpius.

_I was so proud of him when I was born. My perfect little son._

Draco clenched his teeth and shook his head. That didn't _matter. _He had been proud of Scorpius only hours ago, in fact, when he thought of the way that Scorpius had achieved so much, or had the potential to achieve so much, at twenty-one years old, while Draco felt that all his potential had bled out of him when he was seventeen and never returned.

An earthquake could have thrown down and cracked the Manor, and he would have felt less disoriented. He had never experienced something like this before.

_Yes, you did. The night Harry came to you with his carefully crafted false confession and told you things that you'd never expected to hear he was capable of._

Draco bowed his head, digging his fingers into his elbows. He had had something similar happen to him, then, and that meant he could _deal _with it. He could tame the chaos and put Scorpius's faults in perspective.

Then he glanced towards the half-crumpled letter that still lay on the table.

Except…

Except that he had never counted on this level of murderous anger, or the taunt buried in the letter that clearly implied he would start killing again unless and until Harry came back to the wizarding world and "showed" himself to Scorpius.

It was Scorpius who had met Harry outside the walls, and cast the Carver's Curse on him, and stood listening to the conversation between Draco and Harry, to make sure that Harry said nothing too revealing. And Harry had known it all the time, and hidden it from Draco as stubbornly as he'd hidden the original truth, because however much Draco's feelings for _him_ might have changed, he had known that Draco's love for his son would not have.

_I was such a purblind fool._

That had been the odd thing about the footprints, of course, other than the fact that they had been made by the dragonhide boots that Draco had seen on Scorpius's feet. They pointed _away _from the Manor, as though the attacker had come from inside. Draco should have seen that at once, although he had no experience in tracking criminals by their footprints, as Harry did; it was simple enough.

_ So._ Draco paced in a circle, his eyes scoring the stone as his boots could not. _We all had a hand in this. Myself, for not seeing what was beneath my nose earlier. Harry, for deciding to act "nobly" without telling me what he was going to do, and then going ahead and doing it. Scorpius, for…_

Draco lifted his head. It occurred to him that, other than the sly and teasing implications in the letter, all of which could be denied in front of a court, he didn't know exactly what Scorpius had done. The most likely story was that Harry had caught him torturing Herrington and Colnbrook, taken them to St. Mungo's, and wiped their memories. And then he had made a promise to Scorpius, or a deal with Scorpius, to keep the secret as long as he left the wizarding world.

But what had made Harry so sure he could trust Scorpius to keep his end of the bargain? Since his return, Scorpius had made at least one determined attempt to kill him, and Harry had hidden _that_, too, so it wasn't that he thought Scorpius's sadistic impulses had somehow been finished off when he attacked his first two victims.

_How do I know they were the first?_

Draco wiped the corner of his mouth, aware of both cold sweat and cold saliva there, and shook his head. He needed to know more about this. And the only way that he could do that was to talk to Harry. Yes, Weasley and Granger knew the truth, but Draco doubted they would give him all the details even if he told them what he had figured out. Their first loyalty was still to Harry, and they hadn't turned in Scorpius, either, when they could have.

Yet how could he find Harry, who could be hiding anywhere, even within one of the Auror safehouses that he had used when part of the Ministry?

A moment later, Draco smiled grimly to himself. There were ways of locating Harry that didn't depend on conventional, law-abiding methods. Of course there were. He had only hesitated at the thought of employing them because of what he had made himself into: a respectful, respectable, meek wizard who crouched down and didn't use Dark magic to show that he could play nicely with others.

A meek Malfoy wouldn't do such a thing. Harry had probably counted on avoiding those means of detection because he knew Draco.

_He knows me as I was before I changed, _Draco thought, rising to his feet and reaching for the letter that had dropped from Harry's pocket. _Before he changed me. _

_And before I had the motivation to change again._

* * *

Draco checked the mirror—a simple, flat sheet of tin surrounded with silver—in his hand one more time. Then he nodded and smeared the mingled ash and blood on the surface into an unrecognizable mess, destroying at one and the same time the runes he'd drawn and the reflection of the building in front of him.

He didn't need it anymore. He'd found Harry.

It was a semi-ruined building in Muggle London, near the same part of London where Draco knew that Scorpius had spent some time. He didn't know if that was deliberate or a coincidence, but he could use the quiet anger and sadness it stirred in him as weapons.

He wondered if that was one reason Scorpius hadn't ever been worried about him finding out the truth, because he "knew" his father and knew that such emotions weren't ones that he often felt.

Draco shook away that nagging question. At the moment, Scorpius was less important as his motivation than as his catalyst. He was here to deal with Harry first, to—express his emotions was a fair way of putting it—and then see what would come out of that meeting, and where they would go next.

There were wards on the door. Draco went through them without slowing down, recognizing them as the kind that would send alarms to the one they were tied to without harming the one who passed them. He stepped inside and watched as piled bricks and stone melted away like the illusions they were, to show a functional room with a few basic necessities, including a plain wooden table and a pallet on the floor.

Harry was sitting up on the pallet, staring at Draco as if he imagined that he could get away with disbelieving in him.

"Surprise," Draco said casually, and caught Harry's wand as his nonverbal _Expelliarmus _pulled it towards him. Then he thrust the wand into his pocket, skin stinging from the familiar feel of Harry's magic behind the holly wood, and stared at him. "Are you going to sit here and listen to this conversation, or am I going to have to tie you up?"

Harry was sensible in the minor matters, if not the large ones like the way he disposed of Draco's heart and life. After a single noisy, gasping breath, he tightened his fists in the tattered sheets spread around him and inclined his head sharply. "I assume that you know," he said.

"I do," Draco said, and watched.

As he had thought would happen, Harry's face turned the color of old milk. Draco sighed, a sigh in which impatience and love and disgust were mixed. "You ought to have known that I would find out the truth sooner or later, Harry," he said. "The only thing I can't understand is why you assumed you had the right to make decisions for me."

"Draco, I'm so sorry."

Draco came near losing his tight grip on his emotions just then. Of course the first thing Harry did was apologize for his knowing the truth. (Draco wasn't foolish enough to think that Harry was apologizing for making the decision for him). He had compassion at all the wrong times. He could extend it everywhere—except to those people who needed it most.

"You should have told me in the first place," Draco said.

"How could I?" Harry was tense still, as though he suspected Draco would lower his guard and let him spring to the side. Draco remained motionless, staring at him, and Harry sighed and let go his grip on the sheets. But all he ended up doing was folding his arms defensively, so Draco wasn't sure how much that accomplished. "You love your son, Draco. You love him still. You might not think so, but I can see the marks of your suffering in your eyes. I know you that well."

Draco bowed his head. "Yes, you know me. You know what blinds me and makes me ignore the evidence of my senses. That was why your confession bewildered me in the first place. But you should have known that I would have wanted the chance to choose the truth, or the falsehood, for myself."

"How could I have let you without taking the choice away from you by telling you the truth right away?" Harry cast his hands up. "I did what was best for you, Draco."

"And best for yourself?" Draco asked.

"That's never mattered to me as much as you and my friends and my children have." Harry's gaze was calm, clear, steady, apparently really not seeing what was wrong with his position.

"You cost me four years of peace," Draco said, and his voice began to rise despite himself. He wouldn't allow Harry's wall of obstinacy to persist, because there was too great a chance that he would go on thinking himself right. "Four years of love, of living with you. Yes, I didn't know about Scorpius then and you might think that I got four years of peace with my son," he added, seeing Harry's mouth open. "But it was _without you_. I missed you. I wanted you back. Can you _understand _that?"

"I should just have stayed away," Harry muttered, picking at the sheets. "Then you wouldn't have to suffer like this."

"Fuck you," Draco said, the first thing that came into his mind, and saw Harry's eyes widen. "Yes, you didn't expect that, did you?" he asked, leaning forwards until his breath was brushing Harry's face, making his eyes blink. "You thought that I would be grateful for what you did if I ever found out. You thought that you could play the martyr and you'd have no _competition. _But this time, Harry, you do. I'm the one who was hurt by _your _decision."

"I thought you'd be bloody destroyed over losing your son, that's what I thought," Harry snapped, his face finally taking on the furious glow of temper that Draco would have expected him to show long since. "Don't act like _I'm _the criminal here. I did all I could to spare you. I lied, I destroyed my own life, I exiled myself from the wizarding world—"

Draco did grab his shoulders and shake him, then. Harry's teeth shut on his tongue, and he winced, raising his hand to the small trickle of blood spilling down from his mouth.

"You _chose _it all," Draco said. "You had at least that luxury. I didn't. I didn't know what was happening, I didn't know why, and it made me want to rage and scream against the world. The thought of losing you. But instead I convinced myself that _I _was wrong, that I'd just never known you at all, and that was the reason I should step back into the shadows and let Scorpius have center stage."

Harry stared at him with wide eyes. "Then—you blamed _yourself_? Draco, how could you? I told you I was to blame." He reached out as if he would stroke Draco's hair, but drew his hand back at the last moment.

Draco caught the hand and crushed it, his emotions crashing against each other so violently he barely knew what he would say next, only that it needed to be said. "How could I _not _blame myself? I should have noticed what you were up to long ago, I thought, if you were torturing and murdering people and then lying about it so well that everyone thought you were a hero. I should have done something. I should have arrested you, never fallen in love with you, exiled you from my home and made you see a Mind-Healer—everything. Anything. I blamed myself, Harry, because I couldn't believe you were like that, but you made me believe you were."

Harry closed his eyes. "I should never have done that," he whispered.

_Now, finally, he's blaming himself for the right thing. _Draco would take it as a first step, although eventually he wanted to get Harry beyond blame altogether and into the realm of what they would _do _now that Harry didn't have a secret to hide anymore. But he held Harry and stroked his hair, knowing it would take baby steps.

Harry sat motionless for long seconds, as if he assumed that Draco would flinch away in disgust when he recovered his senses. Then he threw his arms around him with a muffled sob.

Draco cradled him fiercely, muttering into Harry's hair. "Stupid, idiot, deranged, muddleheaded," he said, and it sounded like a chant of affection even in his ears. He hoped it sounded like that to Harry, too.

Harry snuffled into his embrace and whispered, "I did the best I could. I did what I thought was best."

"And it wasn't," Draco said. "If you're ever tempted to do something so stupid again, come talk to me about it, and we can figure it out together." His voice was getting husky. He cleared his throat, wondering when the last time was that he d _felt _so much. With Harry gone, it was as if his heart had walked out of his body. "What really hurts most of all, Harry, is that you didn't _trust _me."

Harry winced and lifted his head to look at him. "I wanted to," he said. "But all I could see was your face when you heard the news."

Draco shook his head. There was something he still didn't understand, and wanted to know, although he expected Harry's answer would infuriate him in other ways. "Why did you assume that losing Scorpius would be something I couldn't survive, but losing you would be?" he asked.

Harry stared at him with slightly parted lips. Draco brushed a black curl of hair out of his eyes and waited.

"Because—because you'd only known me four years," Harry said at last. Draco snorted, and Harry rolled his eyes. "All right, fine, you'd only _really _known me for four years. There's no reason that you would miss me more than your son, whom you've known and loved all his life. And there were all sorts of pure-blood feelings about heirs and the continuation of the family line tied up in that. I know how important family is," he added softly, as if afraid that his voice would press too hard on Draco's ears. "I would never want to cost someone his."

Draco bowed his head until his chin rested on Harry's head. He remembered the warmth of Harry's skin, shining like a discrete sun, but he clearly hadn't remembered it _enough_. This made him want to bury his hands in Harry's hair and never release him. "You'll always undervalue yourself," he whispered. "I should have remembered that."

Harry made a motion as though he was swatting away a fly. "No," he said. "If I knew someone better, like Ron or Hermione, and I discovered that one of their children was a monster, then I might have tried. But—Draco, I was afraid."

"Afraid of how I would react?" Draco asked quietly.

Harry nodded, eyes downcast. "I didn't want to be," he said. "I wanted to think most about your pain if you lost Scorpius. But I can't deny that that motive was driving me a lot. If you didn't believe me, I would have sacrificed both your trust in me and your peace of mind for nothing."

Draco couldn't deny that, at least. "I would have rejected what you said, but I wouldn't have rejected _you_," he said.

Harry smiled at him, and it was the saddest smile Draco had ever seen, even worse than the one Harry had given him after his confession to the torture of Herrington and Colnbrook, when Draco had told him to leave. That smile had held a hint of triumph, Draco now understood, because Harry had achieved his goal of making Draco turn away from him. "You would have tried not to," he said. "But worry would have eaten at you, and in the end you'd have had to make a decision: to trust me, or to trust Scorpius?" He shook his head, his hair swishing softly around his ears. _So much grey, _Draco thought, staring at it. "Trying to have us both, you'd have had neither, or only him. But even then, I don't think you would have been able to forget."

Draco grunted. Harry had known him well and played him well. But he hadn't thought through _everything. _

"What was it you saw about Scorpius that made you doubt him?" he asked. "You said it had something to do with the way you looked, and so did the letter of his I found. What does that mean?"

Harry stiffened, then sighed. "I should have known that you would see the letter," he whispered. Draco stroked his back and said nothing, because verbal comfort at the moment would only interrupt Harry, when Draco was deeply interested in seeing that he finished his speech. "I…was trained in how to identify criminals, Draco. Sometimes I could look at someone and see the tendencies in them. That was how I looked at Scorpius and saw the way he behaved. I didn't _know _that he was a potential torturer of humans—not for sure—until the night I caught him torturing those two children." Harry's voice tightened. "But that didn't surprise me."

"You could have come to me about that, then," Draco whispered. "Or you could have hinted about your suspicions."

"How?" Harry asked, and now his defensiveness and his anger alike were gone. He sounded as if he were speaking from nothing but a vast weariness. "There—there was no _evidence, _Draco. I kept thinking that I must be mistaken. I knew that you'd raised Scorpius to have pride in himself and his heritage, while I tried to raise my children to be modest because I was so afraid that most of the world would try to play upon their pride. Maybe it was just the difference in the ideals we taught them. But more and more signs kept appearing, and after a while, I couldn't deny it anymore."

"What signs?"

"You never noticed what he did to the house-elves, then." It wasn't a question.

Draco thought suddenly of the house-elf he had seen recently, beating itself in punishment for—what? He shook his head. "I thought I was too soft with them, myself," he admitted reluctantly. "I couldn't bring myself to require punishments from them after what I saw and did under the Dark Lord, but my father told me often enough that they would wander away from their true paths and become worse servants if I didn't. That it wasn't good for them."

"I don't know about that," Harry said. "I'm not Hermione, and I don't know a lot about house-elf psychology. But I know that Scorpius ordered them to break their bones, to gouge out their eyes, to shatter their skulls. I buried two of them."

Draco closed his eyes. He didn't know why he had expected anything different, after hearing what Scorpius had done to Herrington and Colnbrook, but somehow this struck deeper, closer to home. He had lived in the same house with the elves, and never noticed that they were disappearing.

"How could I not have seen that?" he whispered.

"Only two," Harry said hastily, as if to reassure him and excuse him for his obliviousness. "He—he learned pretty quickly not to do that, because it was too obvious and would leave a trail behind. And he knew that I was his enemy, or potentially his enemy, if he did anything too bad."

"What else did he do?" Draco asked. "You can tell me," he added, when Harry hesitated.

"When I buried the first house-elf," Harry said softly, "I found a lot of little graves. Animals were—in them, Draco. And I know a little about reading skeletons, too, from Auror training and some of the cases that I went through along the way. All of them died by violence, except a few that I think he buried alive."

Draco shook his head. "Why did you never tell anyone?" he murmured. "If not me, at least a Mind-Healer or the other Aurors. I can't believe that you would let house-elves die like that."

Harry went tense in his arms. It took Draco opening his eyes and looking before he could be sure that Harry was tense with anguish, not some other emotion.

"That was the thing I really couldn't forgive myself for," Harry whispered. "Along with all the others, lying to you and not telling you the truth the first time I suspected it and not doing something to stop him before he worked his way up to humans. But—I cared more about you than I did about them. You would have found out about it, in the end, even if the Healers treated him or the Aurors arrested him quietly. And—I could have been mistaken. I have been, before. Sometimes people are violent at a low level without ever getting worse."

Draco leaned his head helplessly against Harry's, wondering where either of them would find forgiveness. Because if Harry should have told him about this much sooner, Draco should have noticed it sooner than that. He knew his son. He loved his son.

He'd thought he had.

"I'm so sorry," Harry whispered.

Draco paused, took a deep breath, and looked up, shaking his head. "It's not your fault." His voice buzzed in his ears, as though he'd been on the verge of a faint through loss of blood. He cleared his throat, and, as he had in the moments when he had first wrestled with what it _meant _that Scorpius was a person like this, moved forwards. "We have to decide what we're going to do now."

Harry looked at him with eyes large with pain. "I don't know what we can possibly do," he said simply. "Scorpius will keep his promises—his threats—when he realizes that I've told you everything. Or you've figured everything out," he added, probably because he had seen Draco's mouth opening to challenge that pronouncement.

Draco nodded shortly. "Why did Scorpius choose those two particular victims, and that particular place?" he asked, a less urgent question that nevertheless troubled him. "He must have known that someone would find him."

"He was hoping that it would be me, I think," Harry said in a subdued voice. "Most of the Aurors leave—left—between four and five. Usually I was the only one there at that time of night. I was the most likely person to find him."

"Why Herrington and Colnbrook?" Draco asked softly. It hadn't escaped his attention that Harry had avoided answering that question.

Harry turned his head to the side and chewed his lip, his eyelashes fanning out over his cheek. "They were enemies of his from school," he said reluctantly. "Colnbrook once teased him, I think. Herrington did better than he did at some class or another, and might have teased him, too. It was his revenge. I don't know how he got them there in the first place, because I never got the chance to ask. He might have lured them; he might have Apparated them. I had to use a Memory Charm to take away their memories of the attack and make them think that more time had passed before they went to St. Mungo's than really had. That took away their memory of what had happened right before the attack, too, and they had to make up stories to fill it in."

"If he can do such things because someone once earned a better mark than he did," Draco said quietly, "he is no son of mine."

Harry winced. "Draco—"

Draco laid his finger across Harry's lips. "You've protected him," he said. "You've done a better job of defending Malfoy honor in the last few years than I have. My father would be pleased."

Harry paused and cocked his head. "You usually sound proud when you talk about your father. But not now."

"I'm not," Draco said. "I used him as an excuse." He had to wince as he spoke. It felt as though he was pulling out something deeply-rooted in his heart, something that would leave a heavily bleeding wound behind. "I said that Scorpius was like him and therefore I could ignore the things that sometimes troubled me about Scorpius. I said that at least my father had acted, something I never did until it was too late, and that excused everything else."

"I wish you wouldn't be so hard on yourself," Harry whispered to him, drawing Draco's hair through his fingers and curling it tightly around them for a moment, then gently.

Draco had to laugh. "Look at us," he said. "A pair of old men both trying to reassure each other, both trying to protect our wounds so that the other won't feel the urge to comfort _us_. Can anything be more pathetic?"

Harry's smile was slow in coming, but it came. "Maybe that was the reason at the root of all this," he admitted. "I couldn't stand to see you humiliated, and I hate it for myself. At least forcing you to accept a lie meant I didn't have to admit I was wrong."

"Far too much has gone wrong because of our pride," Draco whispered. "It's time for that to end. You'll have to arrest Scorpius. Or have Weasley do it, if you really think you can't," he added, because Harry's eyes were wild with a fear that came from God knew where. "I have to stop thinking that Scorpius is a real Malfoy and I'm not. I have to act. And if it means that my son goes to Azkaban or to St. Mungo's—I don't know how they'll judge him, guilty or insane—then that's what happens."

"But—I don't understand," Harry said. "That would mean your direct family line would end."

Draco nodded. "I know." The world was breaking in pieces around him, but he knew it had been a rotten world anyway, a wrong one, based on lies and self-delusion. He would simply have to accept the pain as best he could. "That isn't something I like, but it's something I think has to be. There's no way I can rescue Scorpius, not when he's gone this far. And I think he was thinking of killing me."

Harry flinched. "That was the implication I got from the letter, yeah," he muttered. "It was why I _had _to come back. I'd fought to protect your peace of mind; I couldn't see you slaughtered."

Draco's hand found his wrist and squeezed. "I'm glad to see that you recognize _something _as more important than my peace of mind."

Harry gave him a wan smile.

"Scorpius is the one who chose to waste his life, his freedom," Draco said. "And if he's insane, rather than acting on sadistic impulses because he thinks he can and no one will notice, then it's partially my fault for not noticing that he needed help earlier. The only way I can redeem that is to make sure that other people are safe from him." He leaned forwards to stare into Harry's eyes. "Including you."

"I didn't care what he did to me," Harry said, "as long as he didn't hurt you."

"I know, you idiot." The anger was coming back, and Draco let it. "That's why you took the Carver's Curse and _almost died. _I'm going to lose my son now. Nothing can change that. I want you at my side. If you try to do something like that again, then I'll cast a curse I know which makes your skin break out in boils that are impossible to ignore whenever you go more than a few feet from me."

Harry's mouth fell open for a moment, and he looked genuinely surprised. Then he said, "You do know how to sweet-talk me."

"Will you promise me that you won't do anything like this again?" Draco resolved to cling to his focus and keep his attention on the conversation, although Harry's words had made a sudden and powerful need surge to life in his chest.

Harry swallowed. "I have to," he said at last. "Consider my track record when I try to fight for your peace of mind on my own. I think you're right, Draco, and you're the only one who can make decisions about what you need."

"_Finally_," Draco said, with the sensation of a dam breaking inside him to let a reservoir of tainted water flood out, and he leaned forwards and kissed Harry.

The same dam seemed to have burst inside Harry; like Draco, he might have felt every second of their four years apart in the same instant. He returned the kiss enthusiastically, clawing at Draco's shoulders. Draco shoved him down and fumbled at the clasp of his robes, at least until he remembered his wand and undid them that way.

Harry was there before him, incredibly fast, stripping down to trousers and pants with his hands alone. Before Draco could feel jealous that Harry still had that much speed and coordination even when he was shaking with desire, Harry stuck a hand down his pants and grabbed his cock.

Draco moaned and lost focus on what he was doing. His head drooped on Harry's shoulder the way it had earlier, and his hips shuddered and bucked up into Harry's hand. Harry chuckled harshly against his ear and stroked again, making Draco's skin crawl deliciously with the urge to bite and the urge to come.

"Got you now," Harry whispered, and pulled his hand out of Draco's pants so that he could spit on the palm and reach back down again.

When he did that, though, Draco reoriented himself, given a moment to think by the sudden lack of pressure on his erection. And he found Harry's cock, too, as long and slim as he remembered. He stroked up, and Harry yelped; he stroked down, and Harry leaned against him, shaking.

When he felt Harry return to his grip, Draco had the rhythm in his fingers and mind, and didn't need to take another second to get used to the stubby, callused fingers on his skin. He bit Harry's neck. Harry bit his chin. They rocked together, their panting muffled, the sheets of Harry's pallet rustling roughly beneath them.

Harry jerked and twisted. Draco knew he would, he always did that, but he was no better about resisting it than he'd ever been. He exhaled hot breath against Harry's cheek and whimpered, then pinched the head of Harry's cock. Harry went stiff against him, all over, muscled locked tight like his hips, like his skin, like his breath. Draco smiled and fucked himself along Harry's palm, then pinched again.

Harry cried out and came, and that was all that was needed to trigger Draco's own orgasm, a sudden splatter of warmth and stickiness that was reaching and rushing towards _familiarity, _towards the days when they had been together and not apart.

He leaned on Harry when he was done, bearing him back, and Harry opened his arms like a lover, embracing Draco, holding him close, murmuring words so faint that Draco felt them more than he heard them, passing across his skin and into his ears. He closed his eyes and lay still. For the moment, he need do nothing more.

There were decisions to be made—decisions as to what he would do about Scorpius, how much he would tell the Aurors or whether he would, how they would bring in Harry's friends or if they would, what to do next. They hammered in his head like the beating of a second, newborn heart, so insistent that Draco could feel them driving his blood.

But that didn't mean that he had to rise to his feet and answer the demands right now.

He linked his fingers with Harry's and closed his eyes, weary beyond weary.

And home, with hope, at last.


	6. As It Will Be

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of _Crimes of Passion. _Thank you for reading, and especially for your patience in waiting for the last chapter.

**Part VI. As It Will Be.**

"We need a survival strategy."

Harry was the first who spoke, out of a long silence. Draco had sat up, cleaned them both off, and found his robes, then summoned any food that Harry might have in this pitiful hovel. It turned out to be better than he'd thought: chicken salad sandwiches clearly prepared by a house-elf, long and clean pickles, succulent slices of tomato. Draco had shared them, of course, but Harry had eaten without speaking, his eyes shut as if he thought that would somehow allow him to hide from what needed to be done.

Now, Draco was ashamed for thinking that. He had been away from Harry for years, yes, but not long enough—_surely _not long enough—to forget that when he closed his eyes like that, he was thinking.

"Survival," Draco said blankly, wanting to give Harry the chance to explain.

Harry put down his sandwich and showed Draco a faint smile, his eyes becoming bright with appreciation as they slid down Draco's body. Draco drew his robe a little closer around him, then realized how ridiculous that was and let it dangle loose again. God, being without Harry had messed up all his reflexes, he thought in some irritation; it was as though he was partially a teenager again.

The way he had felt when Harry had first become his lover, as a matter of fact. Well, that wasn't odd, when they were reconciling again after a division that had been, in some ways, deeper and more painful than the history that had kept them apart at first.

"Yes." Harry's smile melted, and he looked as solemn as though he was about to begin hunting down a criminal. Well, _that _wasn't odd, either, Draco thought, fighting his instincts to look away. Scorpius was a criminal. Draco still didn't know whether Harry intended to legally punish him, but whatever happened, it would have to involve treating him like what it was. "He'll know what you know soon. I don't think you could go back to being around him and not tell him with your gestures, your words, your eyes."

Draco had started to bristle, but he leaned back in relief when Harry spoke the last words. Of course he should know that Draco would never betray him willingly, but even Draco could admit that Scorpius was better at reading body language than he was, more like his father.

_More like my father in every way, as a matter of fact. Maybe he should have been Lucius's son._

Draco sighed out. He recognized the thought as an artifact of his old way of thinking. He had always thought that Scorpius was better than he was, more a real Malfoy, more the kind of heir that Lucius and his ancestors would have wanted. He had to stop thinking that way now, though. None of them would want a madman.

"All right," he said. "And that means that we have to decide whether we're going to take him to the Aurors or not."

"No." Harry leaned forwards and squeezed Draco's hand. "_You _need to be the one to make that decision, Draco. I won't condemn him, and I won't leave him as he is, except on your say-so. I spent four years—longer than that, if you think back to the time that I first recognized him for what he is—trying to decide on my own what to do about him. It's not right. You should be the one to make that choice."

Draco shook his head, his mouth dry in a way it hadn't been when he contemplated Harry working with him to possibly end the Malfoy line. "No, I can't," he whispered. "It's cruel of you to try and force me to make the decision by myself."

"Draco."

Reluctantly, Draco dragged his eyes away from their joined hands to meet Harry's eyes. They were as he remembered, infinitely deep with compassion, but there was a hard spark in the center of them, too.

"He's your son," Harry said. "He's family. And you've known and loved him longer than me, in the end, even if you did decide that you would rather listen to me." There was still wonder in his voice as he spoke about that, but he went on before Draco could find distraction or solace in arguing that of _course _he had believed Harry, and Harry had been stupid to think that he might not. "I'll help you with whatever you decide, but I can't just—I can't just make the choice. You still have to."

Draco bowed his head. "You said that you'd seen people like him before, and that was how you recognized him," he whispered. "What's the proper treatment for someone like that?"

Harry hesitated so long that Draco thought even _that _part would be up to him. Then Harry answered quietly, "I think he's a sadist. But he doesn't seem as insane as some of the ones I've—met—in the past. He can control his urges. He didn't kill you for the past four years even though his letter implies that he would have liked to. I don't think he's had any other human victims, or I would have heard about them and recognized the signs. I wish I could give you a definite answer instead of negatives, Draco, but that's it. There it is."

"You do think that he's—ill, though."

"Well," Harry said, reluctance riding every word. "Not normal. I don't know how ill. Like I said, if he's insane, he manages to control and hide it well. But there were people who thought Voldemort was sane, too."

Draco wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. So many decisions to make, and it seemed as though the first one would only lay more at his feet. He could see them, if he looked, an endless linked chain of choices, stretching so long that he wanted to be sick thinking of it.

But only for a moment. He loved Scorpius, and he might be the only one in the world who did. As Harry said, he was the one who should make the choice, because he was the only one who cared enough to do what was right for his son.

"I need to speak with him," he said, not something he _liked _to say, but the only true words that would come to him right then. "I won't know how ill he is until I talk to him with full knowledge of what he is."

"Who he is," Harry said.

"That, too." Draco forced his eyes open and smiled at Harry, who sat back on his pallet and looked pale. "Yes, this _is _something I have to do, Harry. You didn't take this choice away from me, so that leaves it up to me. What I'm going to trust you to do is prepare a plan for us that will ensure I can survive this. And you, too, of course," he added, though he didn't know if Harry had any intention of showing himself to Scorpius. Draco wouldn't blame him at all for wanting to stay out of sight.

Harry at once relaxed, and a healthy flush came back into his cheeks. Draco hid his own smirk. That had been the plan from the beginning. Give Harry something else to do, something that would occupy his mind and give him the chance to take care of Draco, and he wouldn't fuss about Draco being the one to talk to Scorpius.

"All right," he said. "And what are you going to do?"

"My options are limited." Draco leaned back against the wall and stretched. His knees ached, and he sighed. _I really am getting too old for some things. _Then he sneaked a glance at the smile on Harry's lips and changed his opinion. _For _some _things. _"If I think that I can't treat him but a Mind-Healer can, then I'll insist he go to one. If I think that he's only criminal and not insane, then…" He paused. "Do you think I can let him go, Harry?"

Harry paused, looking away. When he turned back, it was an Auror with green eyes who met Draco's gaze, and not his familiar Harry. He had met this man a few times during the years he was Harry Potter's lover, and his appearance almost always portended bad news. "Only if you can find some way to keep him from hurting anyone else, Draco," he said evenly. "I know that he's your son, that you love him, that you want him free. That was the reason I didn't report him in the first place."

"But," Draco prompted.

"I tried that, and it didn't work." Harry ran a finger up the side of his ribs as if tracing where the Carver's Curse had cut him open. "He's getting more violent lately, I think, including the threat he made against you in the letter, not less. So we have to find some way to ensure that he doesn't hurt anyone else. I can't—let that happen. Not even for your peace of mind."

Draco nodded. He could accuse Harry of caring less about family than about the lives of innocents, but, well, they _were _the lives of innocents, first of all, and second, he knew that Harry would have arrested even one of his own children if that child had been preying on others. It was a long time since Scorpius had been a baby, incapable of hurting anyone.

"All right," he said. "Then we need a plan to survive initial contact with him, and we'll need one to capture him and hand him over to the Mind-Healers—or the Aurors. How much information will you need?"

"That depends on where you'll meet him, and what defenses you think he has." Harry leaned forwards, intent. "I thought that he had been getting into more powerful Dark magic lately, even with as few seconds as I had to read his aura before he started casting at me. Could he have acquired an artifact or something, something that would give him a lot of power in a very short time?"

Draco sighed as he remembered Scorpius walking through the house, concentrating on the parchment in his hand. "He has a friend who often creates or modifies spells. Yes, I'm afraid that he may have greater abilities than we know about."

Harry frowned. "Is there any chance that we could find out what he may have learned without alerting his friend, or him, of what we're looking for?"

Draco started to shake his head, then paused. He really should hate the smile that curled around his lips, he knew, but on the other hand, Scorpius had spent far too much time lying to him and outsmarting him. It was oddly gratifying to know that there might be a hole in his defenses which Draco could exploit.

"He often punishes the house-elves, even now," he said softly. "He was doing it only the other day. That particular one might have interrupted one of his plans, or walked in on them, at least. I could potentially order the elf to report to me, as Lord of the Manor. I still have more control over them than Scorpius does."

Harry smiled. It had a dark edge to it that Draco suspected echoed his own, although when he asked, Harry shook his head and said, "I was only thinking how smug Hermione will be, once she learns that house-elves played some part in pinning down a person she's always thought I was a fool to protect."

"That's another advantage," Draco said, and tried his best to ignore the looming dark wall in front of him, the one he would have to think about, sooner or later.

The end of the Malfoy family line.

* * *

It took Draco no time at all to summon three of his elves from the Manor, the one who had been punished by Scorpius a few days ago and two others whom he thought more observant than most. They obeyed the summons, eyes wide with awe as they stared around Harry's wizardspace. Harry backed away a reasonable distance, as though he suspected that his presence might intimidate them. Draco appreciated it. They were more than half intimidated by everything already, on the verge of weeping.

He knew how to fix that, luckily. He stood in front of them and gathered their eyes with no more than a subtle motion of his own. The nearest one stood up at once, and then nudged the others as they went on crying. One of them sniffled and wiped her eyes, but the other one curled up around its fists.

"I command you as Lord Malfoy."

It was strange to utter words he hadn't ever spoken outside his dreams. The two recovering elves snapped up and quivered like dogs trained to the sound of a voice, and even the weeping one dropped its hands and stared up at him in awe.

"I command you—" Draco was tempted to repeat the same words, but it would probably sound, to _himself _if no one else in the audience, that he was losing confidence, and one didn't command house-elves like this with hesitation. "As the head of my line, as the one who has the right to call himself that by blood." He knew that a lot of oaths or pronouncements added "by achievement" in there, but while he was striving to be better and more responsible than he had been, he still didn't feel he had done enough to qualify for that. "All earlier commands from my son are forgotten. Future commands from my son are to be followed only if they concern his immediate comfort." He thought that ought to be enough to keep Scorpius from noticing anything for the moment, because most of the orders he gave were like that. "Should he ask for something else, you will bow and vanish, and then not return to his presence for more than a day. Show me that you understand."

All the house-elves were standing upright now, staring at him, and one by one, they nodded, the motion rippling up and down their line like wind in summer grasses. Draco swallowed, glad the first test was past.

"You are to tell me how he commanded you," he said. "And you are to tell me why he punished you."

The weakest one promptly crumpled again, sobbing and wailing as though it had a broken heart. Draco didn't know if that was possible for house-elves, but put the irrelevant thought aside before it could become distracting.

"Tell me what happened," he said, turning to face that one.

The house-elf shrank away from him in terror, gnawing its fingers with sharp teeth. It still hadn't said a word. Draco narrowed his eyes. No elf was supposed to respond that way to a command from a Malfoy speaking as head of the line, no matter who else of the blood had given it an order.

"Harry," he said softly.

Harry had already risen and waved his wand in a gesture Draco didn't know, one that looked like a figure eight redoubled back on itself and then grew more complex before he lost track of it altogether. When Harry finished, he paused and tilted his head down, eyes shut as he seemed to listen.

A second later, he turned and cast another spell, one that froze both of the other elves inside a block of ice. Draco half-thought Harry might do the same thing to him, as he spun to face him, but Harry shook his head, blinked with a lot of effort, and dropped his wand with an effort, sighing.

"No more keeping you safe against your will," he muttered. "Not to mention that you're the only one who can get the creature to talk. Right."

"What was it?" Draco asked softly. He knew Scorpius had put a spell of some sort on the elf, but Harry's reaction told him that it wouldn't be something as simple as a Silencing Charm, or even an order reinforced with Imperius.

"A spell that will destroy anyone who listens to him recite anything about Scorpius's orders," Harry said grimly. "Other elves, at least. I had to prevent them from hearing, and that seemed the simplest method."

"Or one could use a sleeping charm, like normal people," Draco suggested, unable to help himself.

Harry caught his lip between his teeth, as if he was about to start scolding himself, and then grinned. "Right. Well, normal isn't what I am."

Draco smiled at him, one shared moment, before he turned to the sobbing house-elf. "How do we get rid of the spell?"

"It's new," Harry said. "I can tell what it does, but not where it comes from, or what spell it was based off of. Here." He dropped to one knee beside the elf and turned it to face him. His face was gentle, but Draco still had to nod before the elf would stop trembling and stand still enough for Harry to look into its eyes.

Harry cast a few more spells. Draco simply watched him, glad beyond all words that Harry was back by his side. He didn't know how he would have _begun _to handle this one on his own.

Harry snorted a moment later. "I bet he thought that would never happen," he muttered, and rose to his feet, grimacing when something in his leg popped.

Draco stepped towards him. "What?"

"You have to give him the command and not care about his life," Harry said, glancing at him, his eyes very bright. "Not care about his life, not think about what it would mean if your words destroy him, even. Scorpius thought there was no way you'd muster the will to do something like that, so it's a very effective counter."

Draco swallowed for a moment, tongue dry against the roof of his mouth. "Harry…"

"It's not something I ever want Hermione to know about," Harry said, giving him a smile as warm as fire, "but you can do this."

Draco closed his eyes and drew strength into himself, slowly, thinking about the smile and the urgency that had cut through his haze of frustration and indifference when he first heard Harry was hanging about the Manor. He was not the helpless old man he had slid into picturing himself as, and whom Scorpius thought he also knew. He was stronger.

He was a Malfoy, still.

He turned and faced the third, cringing elf. "Tell me what Scorpius's orders to you were," he said, and there was nothing soft or gentle in his voice. He was remembering the pride his father had drilled into him, or attempted to drill, the desperate _need _to save his parents when the Dark Lord threatened them, the assurance he had carried with him into Hogwarts the first day that he mattered because of who his father was. He had learned better on the score of some of those feelings; he had never realized that he would need them again.

The elf wailed, a thin, high sound that seemed to move farther off the longer it went on. At the end, he was kneeling on the floor with his mouth open and his eyes staring into glassy distance. Draco stood with his hands in his pockets, making no move to comfort the elf, even when the moments stretched and he thought it would fall forwards dead.

Then the elf burst into tears and grabbed his leg. "Master Malfoy is so good, so strong!" it cried out. "Iri will never, never, never, _never_-"

"I know," Draco said, and hoped that he was hiding his impatience as he reached down and pushed Iri's head back. He kept his fingers tight beneath the elf's chin, although the urge was there to hold him more gently or at least let him go and wipe his hand. "What did my son command you to do?"

"To fetch him dark things," Iri whispered. Its hands remained tight on Draco's leg, but at least the tears had stopped. "Raven feathers. Pieces of obsidian. Withered roses. Ebony. Abandoned Muggle metal."

Draco frowned at the elf, and then at Harry. Harry had rocked back on his heels and was staring at the ceiling. Draco had seen him do that before, when he struggled to recall certain cases from the deposit of memories decades of Auror work had left him with.

Perhaps it meant nothing-but no, Draco was used to excusing his son like that. It had mattered enough for Scorpius to guard it with a lethal spell. He stared at Iri again. "How many did you bring him?" he asked.

"Two hundred," Iri sniffled, wiping at its eyes with one hand. It let go of Draco and stood back again. "Iri is bringing two hundred, and Muki is bringing two hundred, and Kesa is bringing two hundred."

Draco waited to see if there would be any more names in the list, then nodded and faced Harry. Harry had brought his head down again, and his brow was wrinkled, but he nodded and spoke in a slow, clear voice.

"Like a case that led me to Manchester a few-ten years ago. We thought it was Dark Arts, and it was. But it sounded childish. A ritual that needed black ribbons and scraps of cloth from Muggle girls' dresses? Not dangerous at all.

"But it was a belief spell. A will spell. The people who cast it associated black with moral darkness, and moral darkness with Dark Arts. They had to collect those objects because they needed to trick _themselves _into believing that they had the right, the ability, to raise that kind of power."

Draco frowned. "But Scorpius has known what Dark Arts mean for years," he said, "what spells fit the parameters and which didn't."

"Rational knowledge doesn't always have anything to do with belief," Harry said, one corner of his mouth curling up in an unhappy smile as he stared at Draco. "A fact I've used to my advantage more than once."

Draco nodded curtly, not interested in tracking back down the paths of self-recrimination he'd traversed that morning, and turned to the elf. "When did you start gathering these things for him?"

"T-two months," Iri said, sniffling still.

Harry swore. "The time he sent me the letter," he explained, when Draco glanced at him. "He's been planning this at least this long, then. Or, more likely, he's intended to do it for a long time, but this was when he decided how to do it and started gathering the items he would need to make it happen."

Draco inclined his head, breathing shallowly. The thought of his son preparing to cast a Dark spell of such a magnitude that he would need to gather props, or creating a ritual in the first place, made his skin itch and his skull ache as if there was pressure against it from the inside.

"Draco," Harry whispered. "I think I know what it is."

Draco turned to face him. Harry rose to his feet and came over to touch Draco's arm and then his face. His eyes were wide with revelation, his tongue fumbling and tripping as he tried to turn that thought into words.

"It's like-it's what he i-intended with Herrington and Colnbrook, I think. I _think. _Like I said, I thought it was for revenge. Could have been. He could have _chosen _them for that reason. But the wounds-they're too specific. And he was carrying ashes on him. I remember that now. Why ashes? They're grey. They're from fire. Either of those symbolic aspects could have been important. They-yes, I think so. I understand. He wanted to keep me from telling you the truth, he tried to kill me, but he could have killed _you_, too. I think he didn't want to. I think he was waiting. Tell me, if a Malfoy son murders a Malfoy father, what happens?"

Draco reached out and put his hands on Harry's shoulders, trying to ground him, to keep him from chattering along as obliviously as he was right now. He could feel an ache starting at the bottom of his throat, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to know what Harry was talking about-

At the same time that he knew he had to know.

"He would go to Azkaban, of course," Draco said. "Do you think that the other members of the family would allow him to remain free of a murder charge? And many in the Ministry, even among the more traditional pure-bloods, do not look lightly on patricide-"

"No, no," Harry said, his voice slower now and his eyes bright as bonfires. "Not what I meant. What would the Malfoy magic do to a son who killed his father?'

Draco licked his lips. _Of course. _"The elves would refuse to obey him. He would be unable to touch the artifacts that must be passed on by bloodline inheritance. The goblins would receive warning and refuse to let him access the vaults. I don't know how or why, on that last," he added, in case Harry thought Scorpius's motivation was money. "So I don't know how we could duplicate it, or stop it."

Harry shook his head. "Does anything else happen? What about the Manor?"

"It would seal off certain wings, and if he left, the house would seal itself against him," Draco said slowly. "But why would he want to kill me? If what you're saying is true, then he's held off for years. Whatever urges he may have, they are not unconquerable." That made it hurt worse, to think that Scorpius was sane and merely a murderer, but he quieted the idea and waited for Harry to make it make sense.

"I think he's seeking a way of killing you that _won't _result in all those consequences," Harry said. "Something powerful and Dark enough to require all the preparation that Iri talked about." He glanced down at the elf, who was still sobbing and squirming next to Draco's feet, but at least had let his legs go. "One where you put yourself to death, maybe. I assume the Manor won't seal itself against an heir whose predecessor commits suicide?"

Draco licked his lips. "No. But you have no proof of that."

Harry, surprisingly, didn't berate him for stupidity. He just shook his head. "No, I don't, but it makes the most sense with everything we've seen so far. He cast a spell on the house-elves, or at least on Iri, that specifically plays on your weaknesses. He's left you alive, but threatened you in the letters to me. He tried to kill me, even though the letter seemed to have been sent to lure me back. He wants to cause you _pain_, Draco. He wanted me out of the way because I was the one who might have betrayed his plans to you if he did enough of the Dark magic in my presence, but _you_ were the target. You were always the motivation." Harry's eyes were dimmer now, but still steady.

Draco swallowed. His voice was softer than it should have been, as had been the case since Harry started reciting all the plans that Scorpius probably had in motion. "What have I done that irritates him so much?"

Harry bowed his head and said nothing. Draco took that as an admission that he didn't know at first, and then got suspicious. Harry wouldn't have had a problem admitting ignorance.

"Tell me," he said.

Harry looked up at him, and his smile was helpless. "Nothing that you could have helped," he whispered. "Nothing that you could have got away with giving to him, or denying. You were the Malfoy in front of him, that's all. You have more power over the house-elves and the family's reputation, the house and the artifacts. If he wanted them, then he had to go through you. You didn't recognize his superiority and hand those things over to him immediately, the same way that Herrington and Colnbrook dared to do better than he did in school or insult him."

"You don't know that," Draco said, seizing on a desperate certainty. "Not for sure."

Harry nodded. "That's true. I'm guessing, the way that I do with the motivations of a criminal I'm tracking. But I can be fairly sure what one of them's doing a lot of the time, and this is another case where I've spent _years, _not just hours, learning what he does and how he acts. I think I'm right."

Draco had to turn his back. He wasn't sure if this was worse or better than the news that he might have raised a psychopathic sadist without ever noticing.

Scorpius had been the child Draco always wanted, the child _Lucius _would have wanted, the clever boy, the talented adolescent, the young man who was bursting and breathing with potential. Draco had been surprised at first when he stayed in the Manor after he left Hogwarts, but he knew that Scorpius had many directions he could go in, many dreams to pursue. He had thought it only natural that Scorpius should want to stay, rest, and have the resources and times to follow those dreams.

At least when he thought it through.

When had he started thinking that? Had Scorpius suggested that interpretation? Draco couldn't actually remember.

"I'm sorry, Draco." Harry stepped up beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, supporting him as if he thought he would faint.

Draco blew his breath out until his body felt empty and leaned briefly against Harry, then straightened up again. "Let's assume that you're right," he said. "Because it gives me a third option, without having to give him over to the Mind-Healers-who will be useless if he's sane-or the Aurors-which I don't want to do."

"What is the third option?" Harry looked at him worriedly, running one hand up and down Draco's arm. Draco didn't know if that was an effective way of diagnosing spiritual trouble, but it felt too good for him to tell Harry to stop. "I have to be honest, Draco. I don't see any way that you can do anything else. The Aurors would at least stop him from killing again. The Mind-Healers might be able to help him control his impulses. What _options _are there other than that?"

Draco leaned over to put his mouth close to Harry's ear, so that he could whisper. No one would hear this whom he didn't choose to have hear.

When he was finished, Harry closed his eyes and held Draco for a long time. Draco let his head rest on Harry's shoulder and smoothed his hands up and down Harry's back, feeling the warm weight there, the _solidity_ of a body that Harry had used as a human shield more than once, as a shield for the whole world at least once (and perhaps more than that if some of the things he had hinted about his early cases were true).

"If you're sure," Harry whispered. "I'm worried about how much this'll hurt you."

"Not as much as allowing Scorpius to remain the way he is," Draco said. "And if my solution works, then I have the ability to make more choices after that-especially considering his likely reaction."

It didn't take Harry long to work that reaction out. After all, in some ways he had watched Scorpius longer than Draco had and knew him better. "He'll have to see you as more powerful than he is, then," he whispered. "And he'll have to placate you instead of attacking you." He chuckled, but weakly. "Do you know how much he'll _hate _that?"

"I think I need to learn."

Harry sobered up again and nodded. "All right. Tell me what you need to confront him, and I'll get started making it."

Draco let his hand fall to rest on Harry's where Harry's arm went around his waist. He squeezed once, hard enough to leave a bruise when he pulled back. Harry turned his head and kissed Draco's cheek in response.

They understood each other.

* * *

"Scorpius?" Draco called as he stepped through the front doors of Malfoy Manor, shaking out his cloak and setting it on the peg beside the door. No house-elves came to welcome him. Draco had already ordered them to stay out of the way. He wanted no witnesses other than Harry, and no chance for Scorpius to command the elves to turn against him. Draco knew, now, that he was the Malfoy in power, in control, but he didn't know what other spells Scorpius might have placed against just this eventuality.

"Father!"

Scorpius appeared at the top of the stairs, gracing Draco with a charming smile. Draco felt his heart thump once, hard enough to make his vision blur, and for a moment he wondered wildly if Harry could have been wrong. If Scorpius really was the child he had seemed all along, the Malfoy child who had triumphed where Draco had failed, the one who-

And then Draco reined himself back in. He trusted Harry. He knew Harry. Even if Harry had been mistaken about Scorpius's true motives, Harry's frenzy to keep the news from Draco indicated that it wasn't a con game. He hadn't changed the handwriting in the letter to a kind that Draco would recognize as Scorpius's, either.

"I didn't know where you were," Scorpius chattered as he descended towards him. "I knew that you had a Potions meeting the other week, but I didn't think you had one today. I couldn't find you, I didn't hear from you, and, well, I got concerned." He stopped in front of Draco and reached out to put his hands on his shoulders, giving him a worried little shake. "Where did you go?"

Draco swallowed, and reminded himself, again, that Scorpius was like a Lucius who had learned to use charms instead of threats to get his way, and that Harry had cast a spell on him that would keep him from flushing, looking away to the side, or betraying other telltales of a lie to Scorpius.

"I did set out to attend a meeting, Scorpius," he said. "But I was warned away at the last minute by someone whom I don't want to name."

Scorpius narrowed his eyes, but his smile was still blinding enough that Draco knew he would have been looking at it in besotted, fatherly admiration if not for Harry's warning. "What was the warning, Father?"

"It was about Potter," Draco said, and he didn't have to feign the emotions that made him close his eyes and turn his head away, although they weren't the emotions that Scorpius was probably imagining. "I didn't-Scorpius, I never knew that he could have betrayed me that way."

"What way?" Scorpius's voice was thick. His hands clenched down until Draco could imagine him leaving bruises on his shoulders the way that Draco had left bruises on Harry's hand a short time ago.

"He spread rumors about me before he went," Draco whispered. "Rumors that said I was a poor lover, a worse wizard, and incapable of deserving someone like him. But that's nothing. I could have put up with that, after it was revealed that he was a torturer and an attempted murderer. Who would believe the word of someone who had done that? But he spread rumors about you, too."

"He did?"

Three hours ago, three days ago, Draco would have listened only to the earnest tone on the surface of Scorpius's voice and not the steel beneath. But his eyes had been opened, and he would not close them again. He nodded to his son and reached out to scrabble in his robes, fisting them and dragging him close.

"I have an idea for how to stop him," he whispered. "I can close the Manor against him. But I need your help."

"Yes, of course," Scorpius said, and his voice was heavier now, his hands on his father steady. "Yes, I can do that."

Draco turned and led him out of the Manor without faltering, without looking back. He had always despised his own acting skills-he hadn't been able to fool even the sixteen-year-old schoolboy that Harry had been, when he had to conceal the fact that he was working on a way to end the threat to his family-but this time, it would be easier with Harry's spell and the fact that Scorpius couldn't see his face.

Maybe.

Part of Draco remained in thrall to the feeling that Scorpius was still the ultimate Malfoy, the _real _one, the one that Lucius would have wanted. He had to hold those feelings firmly at bay as he led Scorpius over the grass towards the baited trap that Harry had already set up, with his help: an anti-ritual, a circle drawn in the grass with their wands and infused with the spell Harry thought necessary to stop Scorpius. He would have to have all his confidence in place in a few moments, and feeding his inferiority complex was not the way to do that.

But it was hard to go against something he had believed for nearly half his life-longer than that, if he thought about his feeling of inadequacy before Scorpius was born. And now he had to face the fact that the one thing he thought he had done right, siring a good heir, was wrong, too. He would have to start over, at forty-seven.

He swallowed, and stepped within the circle. Scorpius followed him with a bright expression, looking around like a wolf who had smelled prey.

Harry stepped out of the shadows. Scorpius jerked back with a snarl, but still didn't turn on Draco. He held out his wand instead, and a power that Draco hadn't been looking for, one that seemed to be made of pure twilight, swirled around him. "Run, Father!" he called. "I can hold him off long enough for you to trigger the wards."

_I'm sure you can, since you used the Carver's Curse on him, _Draco thought grimly, but he wondered, a bit, how much of the bad results of that confrontation came from Harry being reluctant to use a spell on Scorpius. He would have to hope that Harry, too, was more committed to defeating Scorpius than he had seemed at first.

"I call upon the blood of Malfoys past," Draco said, turning around so that he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Harry.

Scorpius's eyes flashed to him, and he stood still for a moment, the twilight wings falling limp around him. That gave time for the first spell buried in the circle to activate, and a blue flame burst into life behind Scorpius. Harry was chanting frantically under his breath, the Latin blurring in his rush. Draco just had to hope that it wouldn't blur so badly as to make it useless.

"Father?" Scorpius whispered. "What are you _doing_?"

"I call upon the legacy of Malfoys past," Draco said, keeping his voice steady despite the death-pallor of Scorpius's face. "I call upon the traditions that link us, the blood that makes us pure, the magic that makes us what we are."

More flames unfolded behind Scorpius, winding up from the ground into shining spirals. Gold, white, yellow, orange. There was only one missing, only one gap left in the circle, and Scorpius was pressing forwards, his steps making the ground shake.

Draco gritted his teeth. Harry had said that he had to be strongest at this moment, because this was the one act of pure will in the spell, the change they had made to the ancient traditions that would punish a Malfoy heir who had killed his predecessor.

But as Scorpius came towards him, Draco could see Lucius in his face, and Abraxas, and other ancestors from the portraits. And the child he had loved, and the infant he had held, and the adolescent he had encouraged in his studies.

Draco clenched his fists. He wanted to fall to his knees. The power swirling around Scorpius's shoulders pressed on him, but he knew most of the pressure came from the inside, from the _need _to succumb to it to get away from this decision. It would be so much easier to say that he was too weak to do this, to betray his child or survive his child's betrayal, and who could blame him?

Harry's hand brushed the small of his back.

Draco looked up and spoke the last words. "I call on the past of the Malfoys to take his power from him."

The last flame sprang up to close the gap in the earth, scarlet and glaring, like the colors in the Gryffindor common room, like the Weasley jumpers that Harry had still insisted on wearing after they started dating, like the eyes of the Dark Lord. It flashed lurid brilliance through the night and touched the shadows around Scorpius.

They fell to nothing.

Only then did Draco know how fiercely he had meant it.

Scorpius screamed as the flames bowed inwards like claws and surrounded him. Draco remained steady and still, leaning back against Harry's hand when he had to. This wouldn't kill his son, he reminded himself, or render him insane-presuming he was still sane. This would only exact the punishment that Draco had determined as appropriate.

He tried to remember the last time he had punished Scorpius, and couldn't.

The flames twisted and fell in braided ropes around Scorpius. The ropes ran around his neck, beneath his robes, about his limbs. They sank into his skin and yanked, and flying skeins of color came out, twisted and tarnished and beautiful, fading as they flew.

Draco tried to swallow, and found his throat locked with disgust and terror. Harry turned his face into Draco's shoulder, murmuring words that Draco couldn't hear, but didn't need to, for them to be effective. He shuddered a little and kept his eyes fixed on the sight in front of him. He had assigned this punishment to Scorpius; it was only fair that he saw how Scorpius bore it.

Not at all well, that was how he bore it. Of course, Draco couldn't have expected to do better if it was him. Scorpius's hands scrambled around the air, then tore at his face, rending shreds of skin away beneath the fingernails. His scream was soundless after the first moments, but still twanged along the strings of Draco's heart.

"Almost over," Harry said, and Draco would have snapped at him about how he could know that-

Except he was right. The flames whirled away, and Scorpius knelt there in the middle of a circle of burned grass, his body still shaking as though he had frostbite, but no longer being plagued by the magical equivalent of a rack. Draco waited, waited for Scorpius to turn his head towards him and utter some tragic accusation, but it didn't happen. Scorpius stayed there, and Draco saw defeat in the way his shoulders set.

"Stay back from him," Harry murmured, with a hand on his arm, when Draco started to step closer. "He could still be dangerous physically, and he may be carrying a potion he prepared earlier."

Draco gritted his teeth, knowing it was good advice, and reminding himself that the young man who seemed so helpless now would have killed him, if he could, ten minutes earlier. He settled for moving to the side so he could see Scorpius's face if he raised it and calling his son's name.

Scorpius jumped when he heard it, as if he had assumed that Draco would leave him alone to suffer. _That is a reasonable assumption, given the way I have treated him so far, _Draco thought.

Scorpius stumbled up to his knees and turned around.

Draco tensed himself to bear it. He didn't know if he could have without Harry at his back. Scorpius's face was now utterly pale and blank, bereft of some gentle, living color it had always carried before.

"What did you do to me?" Scorpius whispered, as if the sense of loss that he must have experienced already hadn't told him.

"Took away your magic," Draco said. "The only thing I could think of to do when I suspected that you would kill me for the Malfoy legacy otherwise, but didn't know if you were sane, insane, or simply spoiled."

Scorpius tried to stand upright, but he was trembling too badly. He shot a glance at Harry that made Draco fall back as if he could get in between his son and his lover now. "Is that what _he _told you?" he asked softly. "Making up lies to get back into your good graces? Or did he just fuck you into thinking nonsense? That would be like him. Like _you_."

Even now, this late, Draco felt the burn of doubt curling through his middle. Perhaps Harry had been wrong, and even if Scorpius had been dabbling in Dark magic, that didn't mean he had tortured Herrington and Colnbrook. It didn't mean that he had wanted to kill his father. It didn't mean-

It was the memory of the spell on Iri that saved him then. Scorpius could explain his other actions in different ways, perhaps, but using a spell that would destroy a house-elf if it attempted to remain loyal to its primary master had no excuse.

"Neither," Draco said. "He gave me reasonable suspicions, as did the letter in your handwriting. Now. If I'm wrong, I'm sure that you can prove it to me."

"You made me a _Squib_," Scorpius said, his voice heavy with horror.

"I did," Draco said, ignoring the way Harry shifted behind him at the pronoun. He was still the one who had made the decision to make his son less than a wizard, even if Harry had come up with the plan. "I suspected that you wanted to hurt me in such a way that I would give you the power over the Malfoy fortunes and properties of my own free will, so you could avoid the way the Manor would lock itself up if you simply murdered me. And I suspect that you used the Carver's Curse on Harry. Am I wrong? If I am, then you can work with me to find the real culprit. It shouldn't be hard."

Scorpius didn't respond-to Draco. He turned to Harry instead, and his gaze glittered like a diamond with hatred.

"You," he breathed. "You're the cause of it all. If not for you, then this wouldn't be happening."

"No," Draco said, so sharply that he startled himself. Scorpius looked back at him, and this time, Draco did step in between Scorpius and Harry, but, more to the point, up to his son. Scorpius studied him with open, icy scorn.

"I'm the one you disregarded," Draco hissed. The words emerged from the same part of himself that had closed the circle completely, the same part that had commanded Iri to speak, the same part that knew he and Harry were not wrong about Scorpius's crimes no matter how much he wanted them to be. "I'm the one you thought less than a real Malfoy. I know now why you didn't kill me earlier. It was because I wasn't worth your time, isn't it? You thought of me as so weak, so pathetic, that you believed I would be easy to defeat without Harry at my side. And you _also _thought me so weak that there was no chance I would seek Harry out when he returned to the wizarding world. I gave in tamely to his lies and yours when he disappeared, after all. Why would I find the strength to confront him when he came back? _What strength? _you would have thought."

"You don't have any." His son's eyes were fastened on him now, the way Draco had wanted them to be, but there was nothing but the edge of scorn in them that he had seen before. "He's the one who inspired you to do this, and if I'd killed him, then you would have folded up and collapsed like you always have."

Draco licked his lips. He had known that would happen, or at least was likely to happen, that Scorpius was capable of saying something like this.

To his amazement, having been prepared didn't actually make it hurt any less.

"You disregarded me," Draco repeated. "That much is true. But, even worse, you made me disregard myself, think that because I had failed at one thing I would always fail at the rest, and that you were the only chance I had to redeem myself. I would have gone to my death believing that. I owe Harry for telling me otherwise, but I'm the one who had to make the choice to believe it."

Scorpius said nothing this time. He only stared, his eyes moving slowly, bitterly, back and forth between Harry and Draco.

"What are you going to do with him?" Harry asked quietly. His hand brushed Draco's back again. Draco didn't lean into it, but only because he honestly didn't feel that he needed the strength this time. The truth had stiffened his spine.

"That's up to him," Draco said. "If he'll swear not to attack me and to leave the wizarding world for a certain number of years, then I'll think about restoring his magic. If he won't, then I'm going to _Obliviate _him and drop him into the Muggle world with an amount of money sufficient to enable him to survive."

Harry looked away and nodded. Draco reached up this time to touch his cheek and turn his head back. "You would prefer that I tried to do something else?" he asked. "I know that you spent a long time trying to protect him."

"It's nothing compared to the amount of time you spent suffering." Harry nuzzled his cheek against Draco's palm. "I was just thinking of Herrington and Colnbrook, and wondering whether he would attack someone else and make them into his innocent victims. Can you make him swear not to do that, either?"

"Yes." Draco smiled thinly and turned back to his son. "With his magic gone, he can't make an Unbreakable Vow, but there are artifacts we own that will keep even a Squib's oath if he swears on them."

Scorpius stood straighter. "You can't do this," he said. "I won't swear. And you wouldn't simply leave me to starve in the Muggle world, Father. What do _you_ know about it? Not enough to make sure that I would be safe. And you would feel compelled to watch over me, while letting me keep my memory."

"He might not know enough about the Muggle world for that, no," Harry said, in the voice that Draco suspected he used when conducting arrests. "But I do."

Scorpius stared at Harry. His lips drew back from his teeth, and his hands reached out as if he would rend Harry into strips of flesh with nothing more than his nails. Draco tensed to jump. He was seeing his son's temper unleashed at last, and it made him look like a rabid animal.

But then Scorpius simply shuddered and turned his head away. "I'm the heir to the Malfoy line," he whispered. "You could never have another one like me."

"I would hope not to, yes," Draco said.

Scorpius shook once. Draco blinked. That mildly sarcastic comment seemed to have sunk deeper into Scorpius than all the words he had used so far. Perhaps Scorpius found it easier to endure almost anything else than evidence of disregard from someone whom he had, in turn, disregarded.

"I still love you, Scorpius." _A bitter, painful kind of love, _Draco thought, but it was true nonetheless, or he wouldn't have said it. "I still want to have you here, fully restored, with your magic. But I _am _going to make sure that you won't be a danger to me, Harry, or the family legacy ever again. That means that you can swear and spend some time as a Squib to demonstrate good behavior, or I'll use the Memory Charm and see what you're like when you're stripped to your essential nature, without the Malfoy magic to serve as a stake. It's your choice. You won't get your magic back for years under the first set of conditions, but it's preferable to never getting it back at all."

Scorpius turned to him, pivoting smoothly on one heel as though someone had put him on a gate and pushed him. This time, his face revealed nothing. Draco had once envied him that control over his expressions, which he could never have attained.

This time, Draco knew better. He wouldn't have wanted to pay the price that that smooth face demanded from flesh and soul.

"I spent more than half my life believing you should have died and that _I _should have been the heir to the Malfoy fortune as soon as I was born," Scorpius said. His voice sounded muffled by something that Draco couldn't even imagine, but it was still struggling through. "I'm not going to swear to someone like you, someone I firmly believed was inferior."

"Believed," Harry murmured. "Does that mean that you still do? Even when he found out what you were doing in time to stop you?"

Scorpius might not have heard him. He just stared at Draco, and his breathing rushed faster and faster despite what Draco thought was a massive effort to control it. "Just remember," he said. "Someday, you're going to have to deal with me again."

Draco nodded. His stomach was full of curdled coldness, and he was already thinking of all the arrangements that he would have to make to get Galleons changed into Muggle money, and people contacted who wouldn't mind taking more money to watch over Scorpius, and safe places arranged if Scorpius couldn't find them on his own.

But he was not going to change his mind, or be less implacable when faced with the implacability in Scorpius's expression.

So he raised his wand and said very gently, "_Obliviate._"

* * *

"He'll be all right."

Draco leaned back from the table and nodded, putting a hand over his eyes to rest them. He and Harry had spent the past two days making sure that Scorpius would be safe, including locating the best place to put him when he woke from the gentle sleep that Draco had laid him into immediately following the Memory Charm and setting up a network of contacts who would watch and help Scorpius as necessary. Draco wanted to lie down in his bed and wait until the exhaustion went away.

Harry stepped into place behind him and started to massage his shoulders. Draco sighed and rolled his head towards him. "I still don't know if I did the right thing," he muttered.

"Welcome to my world," Harry said, with a tiny huff of a laugh into his ear. "I used to think the same thing every time I arrested someone who had been killing in vengeance, or using magic that was just a shade too Dark for the Ministry but would be a different spell with one word pronounced differently." He tightened his hold on Draco. "I thought it a lot right after I lied to you and fled the wizarding world."

"You shouldn't have," Draco said, reaching up and practically crushing his wrist. "You should have _known _that was wrong."

In the face of his gaze, Harry bowed his head. "I know," he whispered. "I'm sorry, again. But I still would have done anything to spare you this pain."

Draco nodded in silence. There was a raw, hurting place inside his soul where he had just scrubbed Scorpius out of his life. There was numb wonder that he had been able to make such a decision in the first place and make his son a Squib. He didn't know if most of his ancestors would have approved or been horrified, but he at least knew that he would have made an impression on them.

At the moment, though, they weren't the main ones he was worried about making an impression on.

He reached out, put a hand on Harry's shoulder, and used it to lever himself to his feet. Harry took a step back so he could rise, his eyes never moving from Draco's face.

"I wouldn't blame you if you wanted me to leave," Harry said, whispering as if that would let him avoid waking any more pain in Draco's soul. "I was the one whose arrival showed you all these things about Scorpius-"

"And the one who saved my life," Draco finished. "I would have ended up surrendering the Malfoy magic if not for you. Scorpius would have-_persuaded _me, and he wouldn't have wanted to leave me alive afterwards."

"You think he wasn't insane," Harry said tentatively.

Draco shook his head. "No. Simply arrogant, spoiled, and impatient with waiting for a prize that he thought should have been his. Very much a Malfoy's Malfoy. All things I never was," he couldn't help adding.

Harry's fingers tightened so harshly on him that Draco blinked in surprise. Then Harry ducked his head down so that he could peer into Draco's face, and it got worse.

"No," Harry said hoarsely. "You're more than that. Malfoy enough to be stern when you have to, Draco enough to feel bad about it. Someone who can endure years of suffering and then act decisively after it. Someone who can find the strength in his soul after decades of suppressing it and being told it doesn't exist." He leaned closer still. "The man I love," he murmured, and then kissed him.

Draco stood stiff and still for a moment. He wasn't sure that he deserved this, when he should have seen from the beginning what his son had been and done, when _he _was the one who had spoiled Scorpius to the point of ruining him and he hadn't dealt with that yet, when he had believed the lies that Harry was a murderer and a torturer...

And then he felt behind Harry's kiss how much that didn't matter to _him_, and Draco groaned and laid the burdens aside for one evening, digging his hands into Harry's robes and the flesh beneath.

Harry drew back, eyes bright, and pulled him towards the bedroom. Draco followed, one step after another, into a future that he couldn't define as yet, except that it would be touched by the past.

Tainted by the past. Tarnished by the past.

Tempered by the past.

There was love in Harry's eyes, and faith in his touch. And Draco had felt his own strength for himself when he stood there and called the scarlet flame to close the circle.

He was more than he had thought himself, more than even a Malfoy, which he had one thought the highest title he could aspire to.

He kissed Harry back and began to shrug off his robes.

**The End.**


End file.
